


Deep in the Tree, All the Locks Click Open

by Tam_Cranver



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Fusion, F/F, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 18:53:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 88,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29954370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tam_Cranver/pseuds/Tam_Cranver
Summary: Nile Freeman is at loose ends after a near-death experience that ended her naval career. When a friend of the family tells her about a position as lady's companion for the reclusive widow Lady Andromache at her country estate, Scythian Woods, Nile accepts the position with reluctance. It isn't an auspicious job--the manor is falling apart, her employer doesn't seem to want anything to do with her, and strange noises and occurrences are starting to make her believe the house is haunted. With a little persistence and the help of Lady Andromache's household staff, however, Nile discovers the secrets of Scythian Woods...and herself.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Nile Freeman/Quynh | Noriko, Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko
Comments: 11
Kudos: 33
Collections: The Old Guard Big Bang





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes, in life, one finds oneself writing one's _second_ Ladyhawke fusion. This seems to be one of those times. This story is saved on my computer as "Jane Eyre-Ladyhawke-Old Guard thing," which I think gets across the jist of it. I've marked that "No Archive Warnings Apply"--there is, in fact, a character death, but this is a death that also occurs in the movie, and the character plays a relatively minor role in the story until the end. There's a mildly graphic description of a horse's injury in Chapter 4, though all ends happily for the horse.
> 
> The title comes from "Dreams" by Mary Oliver. 
> 
> Thanks very much to Amy for all the helpful, encouraging conversations about the story and for her beautiful art, which I'm so pleased to have illustrating this fic! Check out her instagram [here](https://www.instagram.com/amybdart/). Thanks also to the Big Bang mods for organizing this--it's been a lot of fun and motivation to actually write!
> 
> If there's anything you think I should mention in the notes that I haven't, or if I've gotten something offensively wrong, please don't hesitate to let me know.

The sun rose, bright and cheerful, over another spring morning in the city. Outside, the chirping of birds mingled with the sounds of horses clopping down the streets and the clatter of cart wheels, the chattering of people exchanging greetings on their way to work or buying something quick and filling to eat for breakfast, the distant horns of ships in the harbor. Nile Freeman’s window faced the street, and so all of this activity might as well have been happening in her bedroom, as close as the noises sounded.

Nile herself felt a thousand miles away from it all.

She stared at the aging white plaster of her ceiling and told herself, for the dozenth time, to get out of bed. She’d feel better, more like herself, once she started moving. She was an early bird, wasn’t she? Always had been.

And yet. And yet, she couldn’t make herself move.

Someone knocked at her door. Before she could even begin to get to the door to answer it, Elijah was sticking his head in. “Hey,” he said.

Nile managed at least to use her hands to push herself into a sitting position against the headboard and smile at her brother. “Hey.”

Elijah gave her a tentative smile, his eyes big and hopeful behind his spectacles. “Mama’s making blueberry hotcakes for breakfast.” _Your favorite_ , he didn’t add. Nile still got his meaning.

“Great. Give me a minute to get dressed—I’ll be right out.”

She kept up what she hoped was a bright smile until Elijah was gone, the door shut behind him. God, why was it so much effort to smile at the people she loved these days? What the hell was wrong with her?

Sometimes it felt like she really had died on the battlefield, and only her ghost had made it home.

Knowing that her mother and brother were waiting for her in the kitchen did light a fire under her that she hadn’t managed for herself, though, and she pulled herself out of bed, splashed a little water on her face from the washbasin in the corner, and put on a dress bright with colorful little flowers. Surely, she though as she studied her face in the mirror, she could muster a normal expression for her family. Not this dead-eyed stare she kept doing.

It was all so familiar, was the thing, the warm sunlight on the wood floors, the noise of the city, the little paintings and prints hung on the walls that she’d saved her pocket money as a child to buy. But it all felt somehow distant, as if the Nile who belonged in this house was somewhere on the other side of a thick wall of glass, and the Nile who clomped her way down the stairs to where Elijah and her mother waited was. Well. Someone else entirely.

Now she was getting fanciful again. She needed to get out of her own head.

“Look who’s up!” said her mother as she sat down. Her voice was cheerful, but there was a kind of edge to it. Nile’s mama had had to put up with a lot from her over the last few months.

Nile was swamped with a cold rush of guilt just thinking about it. “Good morning, Mama,” she said, sounding almost normal.

“Morning, baby,” said her mother, softening a little. “That dress looks pretty on you—it’s nice to see you in something with a little color.”

“Mmm,” said Nile. She wasn’t sure whether to take that as a compliment or a veiled commentary on the drab miltary clothing she’d been sticking to out of habit.

They prayed over their food long enough for Elijah’s stomach to growl, and Nile stifled a laugh. Their mother smiled wryly at them before adding a brief thanks for healthy appetites and lighter spirits to her grace and bringing the prayer to an end.

Nile thought she almost felt hungry looking at the steaming pile of hotcakes her mother forked onto the plate in front of her. It was certainly nicer than anything she’d had for breakfast in the navy, and the taste when she bit into it was perfect, rich and fruity with berries that burst on her tongue, with just a hint of cinnamon and cloves. “Delicious,” she said, and steeled herself at the thought of finishing the plate. “Thank you!”

Elijah shot her a relieved smile before digging into his own plate. He was growing like a weed these days, and eating like a horse. Nile didn’t even think he was stopping to chew his hotcakes.

Nile’s mother had never been one for talking with her mouth full or not appreciating the food, so the conversation over breakfast was limited to some comments over the nice weather, a little gossip about the neighbors, and of course compliments on the food. Nile was grateful for it; small talk was irritating, but it didn’t require much from her. It was much worse to field the sincere questions about what the fighting had been like, what she planned to do next. At least her family had never asked her what it felt like to almost die. If they wondered about the warm blood gushing over fingers from a cut throat, or Dizzy’s frantic calls for a physician, or the kind of hysterical, disbelieving voice in the back of her head going _My God, I’m actually, really going to die_ , thankfully, they didn’t ask Nile about it.

After breakfast, though, Nile’s mother dabbed at her mouth with a napkin before fixing Nile with a serious look. “We’re having company this afternoon for tea,” she said. “Nile, honey, I’d like you to talk to him.”

_Not again_ , Nile wanted to groan. This kind of “company” meant a friend of her mother’s offering her a job at a shop or a laundry or an office that needed some filing. She was grateful, she was, and she knew she couldn’t spend the rest of her life reading books and staring out the window in her childhood bedroom, but she was tired of the cycle of dragging herself to a new job, trying to force herself to smile and be cheerful to her colleagues and customers, and facing the inevitable disappointment in her mother’s eyes when it didn’t work out. It wasn’t that she didn’t try. She did. But she didn’t think she had it in her for a job that required pretending that everything was normal. Not now.

“Mama….” Elijah said hesitantly. He knew the cycle as well as Nile did.

Their mother shook her head. Sharon Freeman wasn’t the type to be interrupted before she’d gotten her whole thought out. “Just hear me out. The man’s name is James Copley.”

The name wasn’t familiar. But then, Nile hadn’t exactly been in the picture for a while—maybe her mother had a whole crowd of friends she didn’t know. God knew enough new acquaintances had crawled out of the woodwork when she stepped out of the carriage from the navy depot six months ago.

That was uncharitable. Nile lay her napkin carefully in her lap and asked, “Who is he?”

“He was in army intelligence as a young man,” said Mama, clearly seeing that Nile was weakening but not pressing her advantage too much. Mama had always played the long game. “You know that when you were abroad, your aunt and I started to go down to the church, putting together parcels for soldiers and supporting others who had family or friends in the war.”

Nile did know it, because Mama and Aunt Sarah still went. They’d only managed to get Nile to go once; it had made her skin crawl the way the kind men and women at the church had fawned over her, like because she’d come home they saw hope for their own sisters and grandsons and nieces and husbands.

“Well,” Mama continued, “Mr. Copley moved to the area about a month before you got home—you’ll have seen him at church.” _On the rare occasion I’m able to drag you out of bed to go_ , said the stern set of Mama’s eyebrows.

“And he talks about being former army intelligence in church?” Nile asked, a note of sullenness creeping into her tone without her permission.

Mama’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “Of course not,” she said. “After he moved to town, he began coming to our meetings to support the soldiers. He didn’t have a child in the war—or, grandchild, I suppose, he’s getting up there in years—but many of his old friends did. We got to talking, and of course I talked about you.”

_Of course you did_. She wanted to banish the ungrateful thought from her mind. It was perfectly natural that Mama would have talked about her at church. The day Nile had stepped off the carriage at the post station three streets from her house, having ridden by horse and cart and ship for three weeks to get home, her mama had clung to her like she would never let her go, crying with happiness. Nile coming home, she’d said, was a miracle. The fact that the word ‘miracle’ made Nile’s blood go cold at the moment didn’t mean that her family wasn’t allowed to share their happiness with the people around them.

“He heard about those other jobs”—Mama always called Nile’s failures ‘those other jobs’—“and thought he might know of a position that would suit you.”

“Mama,” Nile said carefully, “do you know what kind of position it is?”

“Lady’s companion,” said Mama, and Nile had to stifle a strangled laugh. Lady’s companion! Elijah failed to stifle his own laugh and choked on his milk. Mama went on, though, as if she hadn’t heard anything. “Mr. Copley’s old friends with a lady who’s apparently fallen on hard times. Widowed, I think he said, and rather a recluse these days. Tottering around some big old manor out in the countryside, and she needs someone young and energetic to help get her back into the world.”

If Mr. Copley had specifically designed this story to tug at Sharon Freeman’s heartstrings and perk up Nile’s nose at the scent of bullshit, as Dizzy would say, he couldn’t possibly have done a better job. “Young and energetic?” asked Nile. “Mama, you really think I’d make some old lady a good companion?”

Mama leaned forward to stare Nile sternly in the face. “I think you don’t know what to do with yourself, baby, and you could use a change,” she said. “Whatever we’re doing here, it’s not working. Maybe going out into the country, getting a little fresh air, being around people you haven’t known since you were a baby—it might be just the change you need.”

Nile suddenly felt tears prickling at her eyes, and she busied herself with the napkin, staring at her lap and refusing to blink until they dried. She only wished she could be the daughter her mother deserved, the daughter Nile thought she’d been when she left, not this miserable, melancholy stranger. She was stronger than this, she thought. She was tougher than this. She’d been so lucky. She’d lived. She took a deep breath and said, “All right, Mama. I’ll meet him.”

James Copley was an old man, but he walked with a confidence and spring in his step that wouldn’t have been out of place in a man twenty years his junior. He was well-dressed, well-groomed, and spoke with a soft, cultured accent. Nile didn’t have any trouble imagining how he’d charmed the mothers and grandparents at the church. He was certainly charming her mother, who insisted on seating him in the most comfortable settee in the parlor and bringing him freshly baked raspberry scones with his tea and beaming with pride at his every compliment of her home and her food and her children.

For Nile’s part, she was reserving judgment. It didn’t escape her notice how comfortable he seemed diverting the conversation from himself. He was a widower, he’d done some sort of undefined thing in military intelligence, and he’d met this Lady Andromache through some other undefined means—but that was it, that was all he would let out. Before you’d realized he hadn’t actually given you anything specific to grasp onto, he’d already moved the conversation to her mama’s delicious scones or how pleasant the weather this spring was turning out.

Perhaps it was only lingering habits from his days as a spy, but it didn’t make Nile feel any better about this job he was supposedly offering her.

“Lady Andromache’s been a bit…oh, antisocial, shall we say, since losing her wife,” Mr. Copley was saying. “I don’t know that _reclusive_ is quite the word—it’s more that she doesn’t see the point of interacting with people beyond her household, or leaving the bounds of her own estate.”

“Sound familiar?” Elijah muttered to Nile, and she elbowed him in the side.

“That’s a shame,” Mama was saying earnestly. “I think that just goes to show that all the money in the world doesn’t amount to anything without the people we love.”

Mr. Copley’s eyes went sad and sympathetic. “That’s very true, Mrs. Freeman. You’re quite right.” He cleared his throat and took another sip of tea. Turning to Nile, he said, “At any rate, the position shouldn’t be terribly demanding—obviously Lady Andromache would determine the majority of your duties, but she isn’t a demanding mistress, and I believe most of it would entail accompanying her while hunting or visiting her tenants.”

“So…that’s what a lady’s companion does?” asked Nile dubiously. Admittedly her knowledge of that sort of work came mainly from novels, and a few friends who’d been in service. In her experience, far removed from the world of ladies and estates and…ballroom dances, and whatever the hell else nobility did, _jobs_ involved actual work, not just riding with people from place to place. Ladies’ companions in novels did things like dressing hair or reading to elderly women too nearsighted to do it themselves without difficulty—not really things that ladies hired former navy corporals for.

One side of Mr. Copley’s mouth twitched up in an amused grin. “As I said, Lady Andromache isn’t terribly demanding. Not the easiest woman in the world to get along with, mind you, but she’s good to her staff and a very business-like sort of person. I’m sure you’ll be able to settle on a set of duties that suit you both.”

Nile wondered exactly what Mr. Copley meant by _not the easiest woman in the world to get along with_. Her prior experience with the nobility had been with commissioned navy officers, primarily in the form of keeping a respectful distance from them while doing what her sergeant told her to do. She hadn’t gotten much of an impression from them other than that they had nice uniforms and apparently ate and drank well, since their parties had gotten rather raucous. She wasn’t sure she could extrapolate much from that about the kind of lady that lived in a big manor house on a three-thousand-acre estate. “I’d need to live there,” she said. It wasn’t exactly a question. Lady Andromache lived some fifty miles away on an estate called Scythian Woods. Nile had heard of it, but only in directions given to travelers. It didn’t sound like there was much of interest there.

Mr. Copley inclined his head slightly; if Nile’s words hadn’t exactly been a question, this wasn’t exactly a nod. “I’m afraid the house has fallen into a bit of disrepair, but it’s still a fine estate.” It was some drafty, leaky old place full of cobwebby antiques, Nile interpreted. Her face must have looked dubious, because Mr. Copley added, “Lady Andromache’s household staff are fine people. The pay would, of course, be commensurate with the inconvenience of the move you would be making, and if at any point you find it unsatisfactory, the housekeeper is quite willing to negotiate.”

Good to know, Nile supposed, but she’d still be stuck fifty miles away from her home and family, with nothing like the opportunities of the big city if the job didn’t suit her. And she still didn’t really understand why this Lady Andromache wanted to hire her in the first place—she had no experience as anything like a lady’s companion, and it wasn’t as if the woman would have wanted to hire her on the strength of Mr. Copley’s word, when Mr. Copley had never met her before today, either. “If you don’t mind my asking, Mr. Copley….”

Nile’s mama gave her a look that said very clearly that whatever Nile was going to ask had better not be rude. But Mr. Copley gave her one of his smooth smiles and said, “I don’t mind at all, Miss Freeman. Whatever questions you have, I’ll answer to the best of my ability.”

“Why me?” She could have couched it in politer language, but she didn’t see the point, regardless of how much Mama liked this man.

Mr. Copley didn’t seem offended, but rather thoughtful. “Hmm,” he said. “Do you know, rather than try and answer that, I think I’d better give you this.” He reached into the inside pocket of his smart blue coat to pull out a letter and hand it to Nile.

The envelope was of a thick paper and a creamy off-white, with a dark gray wax seal impressed with a pattern that looked a little like an axe. Some sort of coat of arms, Nile supposed. On the other side was written in a clear but old-fashioned hand “Miss Nile Freeman.”

She glanced up at Mr. Copley to check whether she was meant to open it, and he gestured to her: go ahead. She wedged the seal off with her thumbnail and pulled out the folded letter within, written in the same clear and rounded script.

_Miss Freeman_ , the letter began, in the same rounded hand from the envelope, _My name is Nicholas Smith, and I write on behalf of Lady Andromache of Scythian Woods; I am her housekeeper._

Nile’s eyebrows rose. Though she was no expert in the field, it was her impression from friends who’d found careers in domestic service that housekeepers didn’t write to applicants in this way; they posted advertisements or wrote to agencies, but they didn’t send letters to strangers to ask them to come work for their employers.

The letter continued: _As Mr. Copley will have told you, Her Ladyship suffered the loss of her wife some years ago. I am sure you can imagine how great a blow this was to all of us at Scythian Woods. Lady Quỳnh was and is beloved by us all, and the estate is much the poorer for her loss. Though myself and the rest of the staff have endeavored as best we can to support her Ladyship in this time of need, the duties of the estate have proven to be a weighty task to balance with the duties of consolation. The care of the household is ours--you need not think that we seek the work of a maid, but rather someone who might help Lady Andromache bear the burdens of the estate._

_Mr. Copley has heard from your mother that you are a soldier; so was Lady Andromache, and so was her wife, and so were we all._ (Nile’s eyebrows raised again.) _We know what it is to feel at loose ends when one has returned from the battlefield, and we know how trying it can be when the battlefield cannot be left behind entirely in one’s own mind. We cannot know if you and Lady Andromache will get on well together, but we think you are more likely to understand her experiences than many other potential candidates for the position of lady’s companion, and we are certainly willing to give you a trial if you are willing to give us a trial. Please believe me when I tell you that Lady Andromache is a fair employer and that you will be treated with respect in her household._

_We have consulted on the matter of salary in hopes of arriving at a fair offer. Below you will find the number we arrived at, but if you find it insufficient, we are perfectly willing to negotiate. Of course room and board are also included. If you have any questions about the position or the household, you may send them with Mr. Copley, and we will try to answer them to your satisfaction._

_Respectfully yours,_

_Nicholas Smith_

Nile glanced at the number written below the signature, then blinked and looked at it again. Per annum, It was more than twice what she had earned in her last clerk position. Throwing in room and board made it--she’d known that was part of the deal, since she had to live on the estate in order to do the job of lady’s companion, but it meant that she’d be able to save most of her money. And with the salary that high, well. The navy had given her a bit of a nest egg when she’d been discharged, but if she took this position, she’d be able to put enough money away that she might be able to purchase a flat of her own in the city within a year or two.

As for the rest of it...it was strange. There wasn’t any way of getting around it. Nile thought the way that Mr. Smith switched from “she” to “we” to “I” in the letter was strange, as if perhaps Lady Andromache wasn’t the one who wanted a lady’s companion. That would have been one thing if they were hiring a governess or a cook or something, but it seemed strange to have one’s housekeeper hire someone to help a lady “bear the burdens of the estate,” something that from Mr. Smith’s letter sounded like it might be as much about Lady Andromache’s grief as about any practical duties involved in running an estate.

Nile looked up from the letter to see Mr. Copley peering at her with an intent gaze that made her uncomfortable. She folded it with businesslike movements, hiding her unease, and said, “May I keep this?”

“It’s yours,” said Mr. Copley in deceptively light tones. “Is there any response you’d like me to take back to Scythian Woods?”

She shot a quick look over to her mother, who was busying herself with the tea tray. Nile wasn’t deceived; she knew how much her mother wanted this to be the thing that dragged Nile from her funk, the adventure that would excite or inspire or irritate her enough to get her out of her own head. If it wouldn’t have been rude, Nile would have sighed. “If it isn’t too much trouble,” she said to Mr. Copley, “I’d like a day or two to think about it.”

Mr. Copley inclined his head in agreement. “Of course,” he said, his smooth voice revealing nothing about what he thought of Nile’s prevarication.

That night, Nile was plagued with dreams. This was nothing unusual. In the months since she’d almost died, she’d dreamed almost every night. This wasn’t the one where her throat was slit, though, nor the one where she woke to the stunned eyes of the surgeon and nurse. Instead, strange snippets of scenes rolled through her mind like stage sets being wheeled in and out during a show. Two men curled around each other in a bed, their limbs tangled together. Quavering shadows dancing over a bookshelf, cast by the flickering light of a candle. Another man drinking wine directly from a bottle, frowning at the book on the table in front of him. A woman with pale moonlight spilling over her face, staring out a window with a harsh look that struck Nile as sad rather than angry. Darkness. A wolf howling.

She sat up in bed, her heart racing in her chest. The room was still dark. Though there was nothing frightening about the images of the dream that lingered in her memory, she knew that she wouldn’t be going back to sleep tonight.

She never did, after such a dream.

Her mother and brother gave her concerned looks over the breakfast table the next morning—no surprise, she’d been up half the night and looked it—but Nile didn’t have the energy to put on a good face for them. Instead, she scanned over the letter from Lady Andromache’s housekeeper again, once more trying to decide what she thought about it. It was possible, she thought, that her dreams and her general restlessness had made her unfairly mistrustful; she knew perfectly well how networks of former military friends could come together and last for decades, assisting each other long after they’d left military service. In the aftermath of her father’s death, her family had been kept afloat by just such networks. It was perfectly possible that through Mr. Copley and the group at church, she had come to the attention of another such network, one with sympathies for her position and money to throw away.

Nile looked at her mother. “What do you think about it, Mama?” she asked, suddenly desperate for someone to tell her how to proceed.

Her mother, who’d been stirring milk into her tea, set down her spoon to silently slide Mr. Smith’s letter over to her seat. She read it silently, then set it down to look at Nile. “I think it’ll be different than anything you’re used to,” she said. “You and I have friends working at those big country houses, and I know that they have different ways out there. Rich folks there are big fish in little ponds; it may be that this Lady Andromache is used to getting her own way in things in a way that’s likely to ruffle your feathers.”

“I did have to obey officers in the navy, you know,” said Nile, feeling absurdly defensive.

“I’m not saying you can’t do it, honey,” her mother said. “I’m saying that it might not be the kind of work that suits you. But you won’t know that unless you give it a try. It’ll be quiet out there. Lots of fresh air and good food.”

Maybe there was something to that, Nile reflected. Maybe having the space to move and the freedom to be whatever she felt like, even if it wasn’t what her school friends and the old ladies at church expected, would be a nice change.

Of course, she’d thought that about joining the navy, as well. Nile swallowed that thought. “And if Lady Andromache turns out to be a sour old woman who’s stingy and mean to her servants?”

Her mother quirked an eyebrow. “I don’t know how stingy she can be, if she’s offering this kind of money to a girl she’s never met. And I don’t think Mr. Copley would have recommended her to you if he thought she’d treat you badly. But if she does, you don’t have to take it. If she _is_ stingy or mean, you tell her to go to hell and you come back home. You’re always welcome.” As if overcome with sudden emotion, she reached out to grasp Nile’s hand and squeeze it. “You know that, don’t you, baby? If you want to stay, you can stay. You don’t have to take this job, and you don’t have to keep it if you don’t like it. This is your home, and you are always, _always_ welcome here.”

There was a lump in Nile’s throat now, and tears pricked at her eyes. “I know, Mama,” she said. “But thank you.”

After breakfast, Nile and Elijah took a walk out to the harbor. Elijah, who was on holiday from university for the week, told her about his natural history professor, who looked like an owl, and a Round Robin novel he was writing with his friends, and how inferior the food at school was to Mama’s cooking. Nile let it all wash over her, feeling an aching sort of fondness for him; she loved him so much, and she felt so ill-equipped to be his older sister at the moment.

Elijah seemed to reach a stopping point in his latest anecdote, and they walked without speaking out to watch the ships from one of the piers, the shouting of sailors and porters and the shrieking of seagulls loud enough that talking would have been tricky, anyway. Elijah turned his attention to wrinkling his nose at the piles of fish the trawlers were disgorging on the western edge of the pier, while Nile focused on not running into anyone or tripping over a net or a crate.

As they turned back and headed toward the quieter little spits of sand where children were splashing in the water under the watchful eyes of their parents, Elijah glanced at Nile sideways. “So,” he said. “You think you’ll take this lady’s job?”

Nile gazed out at the water. The enormity of the horizon made her feel small, but in a familiar way, at least. “Don’t have any reason not to,” she answered.

Elijah nodded. “I think it sounds exciting. Old manor, reclusive old widow? I bet it’s haunted.”

That startled a laugh out of Nile. “Yeah,” she agreed ironically. “It’s probably haunted. And they’re hiring me because of my expertise with ghosts.”

“I mean it, though,” said Elijah. “It’ll be an adventure. Honestly. No wonder you’ve been bored around here. Compared to the navy….” He trailed off. He knew as well as anyone that the navy wasn’t an _adventure_ , but Elijah had always had a romantic streak to him. Nile couldn’t even be irritated with him about it; the world had always looked more exciting through her little brother’s eyes. It was something she loved about him.

“Sure,” she said. “An adventure.”

Mr. Copley, who came again for tea the next day, was pleased at Nile’s acceptance of the position, and told her that he would convey it to Lady Andromache. Scythian Woods would send a coach for her, he said; she’d receive word once the proper arrangements had been made, to let her know when to expect it. Nile thanked him for making the arrangements, all the while wondering why on earth he was going to such trouble.

That night, Nile dreamed again; it started with her waking in the hospital tent, and ended with a strange bird’s-eye view of a woman riding a horse across an open plain. If Nile had been the sort to put stock in dream symbolism, she’d have said it was some kind of sign that Elijah was right and that this job was going to be some kind of life-changing adventure, but not necessarily in a good way. But Nile had never been the sort to consult tea-readers or parlor magicians, and strange dreams had become old hat to her by this point.


	2. Chapter 2

The coach arrived a week after she’d given her acceptance to Mr. Copley. It was fine in construction but had clearly seen better days, its paint wearing at the corners and its fittings slightly rusted. The horses, though, were good-tempered and clearly well cared-for, which Nile took as a good sign. It was driven by a placid man called Andrei, who, when asked if he was Lady Andromache’s coachman, shrugged and said, “Eh. I run errands for her sometimes. Always pays on time.”

Mrs. Freeman’s eyebrows rose at that, but, hospitable to her core, she invited Andrei in for tea and sandwiches, which he accepted readily and consumed with the steadiness of a machine. Apparently immune to Elijah’s entreating voice, Andrei answered his questions with single words or grunts. Reading between the lines, Nile guessed that he was more an odd jobs man for the manor rather than a regular employee, and possibly that he took jobs from other employers who might require a high degree of taciturnity in their henchmen. The ladies at church could wax romantic and the gentlemen wax moralizing over the peace and crime-free nature of the countryside, but Nile had served in the navy with plenty of country people, and she knew those parts had their fills of smugglers, swindlers, and sharp dealers. Perhaps Nile was letting her imagination get away from her, but if she was right, it said something about Lady Andromache that she’d sent Andrei to fetch her. What, Nile wasn’t sure yet, but it definitely said something.

Given Andrei’s efficient methods of disposing of food, it wasn’t long before he was wiping crumbs from his mouth with a faded cloth napkin. “We ought to go,” he said to Nile. “The drive is some eight hours.”

Nile rose slowly. “Let me take your plate to the kitchen,” she said to Andrei. He handed it to her, and she gathered up the rest of the plates and napkins to carry to the back of the house. As she walked, she looked around at the dark paneled hallway, the table between the parlor and kitchen where her mother set correspondence to be mailed and her brother always threw his gloves and hat when he came in from outdoors, the oil portrait of her family that her father had commissioned when she was a child. It might be a long time before she saw them again.

She washed and dried the dishes quickly, and when she returned to the parlor, she found that Andrei and Elijah had already carried her trunk to the coach. All that was left for her to do now was to put on her traveling cloak against the crisp spring breeze and say goodbye.

Elijah’s embrace enveloped her, warm and overwhelming, and she realized not for the first time how big her baby brother had gotten. He had to bend over to wrap his arms around her shoulders; he was half again as wide as her. But his voice sounded the same as it always had when he said, “Take care of yourself, Nile. Write me if you see any ghosts!”

“Will do,” Nile said, her voice muffled against his big frame. “Let me know what happens in that novel, huh?”

It wasn’t the first time she’d said goodbye to her family, not by a longshot. But somehow this felt different from when she’d left, young and optimistic, for training in the navy, or when she’d gone back from her leaves feeling very world-wise. After Elijah let go of her, she found she couldn’t meet her mother’s eyes for fear she wouldn’t be able to leave. She had fought loneliness and confusion and misery to come home after she’d been discharged, and suddenly it seemed unthinkable that she would give it up to leave again.

But for all that her mother had found her changed in ways that Nile herself didn’t quite understand, she still read Nile like a book in some ways. “Honey,” she said, taking Nile by the chin, “you are the strongest person I know. That old lady won’t know what she ever did without you. But if you need to, come on home. You know my door is always open.”

Tears pricked at her eyes, but she blinked them away. “I know, Mama. I love you.”

“I love you too.” She let go of Nile’s chin and embraced her, and Nile tried to feel like the strongest person her mother knew.

Andrei didn’t seem to pay much attention to this, nor did he seem very interested in talking as they hit the road. For the first hour or so, Nile tried to read from one of her favorite poetry books, one that always made her soul feel light and free, but the road became bumpy after they left the city, and she set it aside. The navy had trained much of her motion sickness out of her, but that didn’t mean she welcomed the headache she felt coming on from straining to read in the shaking coach. Instead, she looked out the window.

As they got further outside the city, the houses became fewer and sparser, and the landscape began to take on a stark quality. There weren’t many trees along the road—mostly hedges, hemming in rolling hills covered in dull-colored grass. This, too, became sparser as they drove on and the ground became rockier. Clumps of purplish scrub and tall dry grasses waved in the wind. They made a kind of constant rough sound that accompanied them for much of the way. Apart from this disgruntled-sounding murmur and the plaintive, thin sound of the wind, the journey was quiet. They didn’t run into many people on the road, only the occasional farm cart pulled by sturdy but slow dray horses who looked curiously at them as they passed.

After a time, Nile became accustomed to the motion of the cart and the unvarying landscape, and without her realizing it, relaxation must have slipped into dozing, because when she woke up, the sun was low on the horizon and the sound of the horses’ hooves had changed as the road changed from dirt to gravel.

She sat up straighter in her seat. Andrei, who must have seen the motion out of the corner of his eye, turned his head slightly toward her. “We’ve reached the manor estate now,” he said matter-of-factly, and Nile felt herself perk up with interest.

“Thanks for letting me know,” she said, and looked out the window, trying to take in the landscape in the growing dimness.

It looked pretty grim, to be honest. Maybe it was just the dark, but the few trees in the distance looked like skeletal hands casting ominous shadows over the earth—the name “Scythian Woods” was obviously a misnomer. A dank smell rising from the soil made her think that it was probably boggy. The grass looked shriveled, and somewhere overhead a raven cried, a harsh sound that sent shivers down Nile’s spine. She settled back against the coach seat. After all, no one had promised her a scenic view. She’d spent too much time listening to Elijah’s fancies about hauntings.

The sun had vanished below the horizon when they pulled up to what Nile guessed must have been Scythian Woods. As she stepped gingerly out of the carriage, wriggling her toes to wake them up and steading her shaky coach legs, she gazed up at the house.

It would have been something really special once upon a time, Nile thought. It was as big as a palace, with a pale façade that might have been sandstone and tall columns stretching up on either side of the door, with arches over the windows and a stately grand entrance. Unfortunately, it looked like it was falling apart. The façade was crumbling, with chunks missing where someone had obviously tried to beat back the ivy and moss growing on it and ended up tearing bits of wall out. A window on the first floor was broken, and a gutter hung from the roof, having become detached at the corner.

What had the letter from Mr. Smith said? That the estate was poorer for the loss of Lady Andromache’s wife?

He hadn’t been joking.

“Thank you,” she said to Andrei, and she went to help him get her trunks from the back of the carriage, but he waved her away and gestured toward the front door. No more putting it off, it seemed. She squared her shoulders and went to knock on the door.

Before she’d even gotten a chance to touch the heavy, tarnished door knocker, though, it had swung open with loud creaking hinges, and the man who had opened the door smiled at her.

He was tall and fair, dressed in a dull-colored grayish-green vest and a rumpled shirt. He had a beaky nose and an intense stare that Nile imagined would be intimidating if he was angry at you, but he seemed happy to see Nile, if a bit restrained. “Miss Freeman,” he said. “Welcome to Scythian Woods. I’m Nicholas Smith, the housekeeper.”

He didn’t especially _sound_ like someone who ought to be called Nicholas Smith—his accent reminded Nile of some of the soldiers she’d met on the Continent. But of course it was none of her business where he was from. She smiled back and said, “Thank you. It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Smith.”

His small smile grew just a bit. “Come in,” he said, stepping back in to allow her space to enter. As she stepped over the threshold, she felt something cold prickling at the base of her neck, a kind of sinking feeling in her stomach. She didn’t have time to figure out whether something had dripped her from above or whether it was to do with having sat in one place for so long, though, because no sooner was she entirely inside than Mr. Smith was gesturing toward a man who was standing behind his shoulder, looking at Nile with a friendly, open expression. “Let me introduce you to Joseph Jones. He’s my husband.”

Joseph Jones grinned at that, and said, “I’m also the estate manager.” He stepped out from behind Mr. Smith to shake Nile’s hand. “Such a pleasure, Miss Freeman. We’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”

“Likewise,” Nile agreed, studying Mr. Jones.

Like Mr. Smith, he was tall and well-built, but he otherwise didn’t resemble his husband very much. Mr. Jones was browner in complexion, with a thick black beard and dark eyes that shone in the light of the entryway lamps. His shirt was well-pressed and well-fitting, and his jacket was a fine black wool that made his brightly colored silk vest, decorated with a pattern of triangles in different sizes, shine by contrast. Where Mr. Smith seemed a bit reserved with his close-mouthed smile and calm voice, Mr. Jones seemed freer with his words and his expressions, his smile broad and his voice cheerful as he said, “You must be tired after such a long drive. I hope the journey wasn’t too difficult?”

“No, not at all,” said Nile, the habit of good manners carrying her forward even as her mind was focused on taking in her surroundings. The inside of the house, like the outside, had the air of a place that was falling apart faster than its inhabitants could put it back together—clean, with the floor polished and well-dusted gas lamps to light the room, but with a pot by the door holding the drops leaking from a wet spot in the ceiling, and a hole in the entryway rug that looked like it came from moths.

A man leaning against the paneled wall stood up to grin crookedly at Nile. “Too kind to say that the only difficulty on _that_ drive is boredom,” he said, and Mr. Jones turned to look at him and laugh.

“True—it’s scenic enough, but not much variety to it.” To Nile, he said, “Miss Freeman, Mr. Sebastian Booker, the groundskeeper.”

Mr. Booker nodded in her direction, and she nodded back. Like Mr. Jones, he was bearded and seemed easily amused; like Mr. Smith, he was dressed in rumpled clothes that Nile supposed made sense for a groundskeeper. He, like other two, had a trace of an accent that had more of the Continent or the sea than the local countryside in it. There was a kind of sadness about his expression that she hadn’t noticed in either Mr. Smith or Mr. Jones, though, and she wondered if it was to do with the mourning Mr. Smith’s letter had mentioned.

They went out to help Andrei with Nile’s luggage, and Mr. Jones handed Andrei a banknote, which he pocketed quickly. “No trouble on the journey?” he asked.

Andrei shook his head. His eyes flitted to the arch above the door, and Nile followed his gaze, but there was nothing there—nothing but some carvings she couldn’t make out in the deepening darkness. “Bridge outside the Chapmans’ could use repairs,” he said shortly, and Mr. Jones sighed.

“Of course. Thank you, we’ll look into it.”

“Good.” Andrei turned to Nile and tipped his hat. “Good luck,” he said to her.

“Thank you,” said Nile, wishing Andrei were just a little easier to read—it would have been nice to know if this was a general ‘good luck’ of well wishing, or the sort of ‘good luck’ that meant ‘you’ll certainly need it.’

As Andrei climbed back into the carriage to drive it off, presumably toward the coach house to put it and the horses away, Mr. Smith asked Nile, “Are you hungry? We usually eat an early supper here, but tonight we thought we would wait for your arrival.”

“I hope you haven’t gone to any trouble on my account,” said Nile, whose stomach had settled since the round of introductions had begun and was in fact beginning to feel a little hungry.

“It’s no trouble at all,” said Mr. Smith with a casual, open-handed gesture like he was flinging her hesitation away.

“Will we be eating with Lady Andromache?” Nile was a bit curious about the mysterious lady, about whom no one had made any mention.

From the overgrown bushes that overflowed from their orderly lines and hedges on either side of the manor house came a sudden rustling sound and the sharp _crack_ of a big stick being trod on. Mr. Smith’s eyes darted over to where the sound had come from, his gaze suddenly sharp in a way it hadn’t been a moment ago.

Mr. Jones looked in the direction of Mr. Smith’s glance, lay a quick hand on his forearm, and then smiled at Nile. “No,” he said. “Lady Andromache tends to retire early in the evening—she’s already gone to her chambers to change. She’s very much looking forward to meeting you, though.”

“Mmm,” said Mr. Booker noncommittally, and Mr. Jones made a face at him and continued.

“She’ll see you tomorrow at breakfast. In the meantime, why don’t we head to the kitchen? It’s getting a little cold out here.”

As if to emphasize his words, a chill wind blew at that moment, rattling through the trees and making Nile shiver under her dress and shawl. Mr. Smith frowned, looking remarkably similar to Nile’s mother when her brother didn’t finish his meal, and said, “Come.”

Her first impressions of the house were borne out as they made their way further inside—it was shabby in a way Nile hadn’t expected of a great manor house, and a little dank and cold, like a cave. The dark halls and corridors were certainly large, even clean, but repairs were clearly needed, to the cracking plaster of the ceilings and the mildewing baseboards at the bottoms of the walls. And yet, the kitchen Mr. Smith, Mr. Jones, and Mr. Booker led her to was warm and cozy and clearly well cared-for. The wooden counters were clean, copper and iron pots gleamed from where they hung against the walls or sat on shelves, and heat emanated from both the fireplace set against the far wall and the modern, cast-iron stove tucked in the corner.

She supposed that it was Mr. Smith’s domain, and that he was the one who cared for it, because he walked authoritatively over to the larder and said, “What would you like to eat?”

Nile wanted to ask if they had a cook—her impression from friends in domestic service was that the housekeeper didn’t usually do the cooking themselves—but that would probably be rude. “I’m not picky,” she said. “I’m sure whatever you’re eating will be fine.”

“That is just it,” said Mr. Smith, shooting her a small smile. “I am not decided on what to make. Hmm. You’ve traveled a long way today, so perhaps something warm and comforting to make your sleep easy?”

“That sounds nice,” said Nile, smiling back at him. “Thank you, Mr. Smith.”

He made a dismissive flicking motion with his hand. “Eh. Call me Nicky. Everybody does.”

“If you don’t mind my asking,” said Nile, “who’s ‘everybody’? Are there other staff who’ll be eating with us?”

Mr. Smith—Nicky—looked at Mr. Jones, who scrunched his nose and looked at Mr. Booker. Mr. Booker sighed and said, “I know, you’d think a house this big would have an army of maids and footmen and whatever, but no, it’s just us.”

Nile blinked at this. “Just the three of you take care of all this?” No wonder the house was so run-down—just cleaning the house would be a huge job for three men, much less the repair work. Was Lady Andromache that cheap, that she couldn’t or wouldn’t hire them help?

As if he were reading her mind, Mr. Jones gave her a reassuring smile and said, “If you’re worried about the mistress of the house’s budget, don’t be—there’s plenty of money, and we’ve never been paid late. It isn’t that Lady Andromache doesn’t want to pay more workers, it’s only…well. She doesn’t trust easily. She prefers to have a small staff of people she knows.”

“Ah,” said Nile. She wasn’t sure if that was any better—the lady sounded like the kind to accuse her servants of stealing or keep the silver locked in her bedroom with her. “Will it be a problem that she doesn’t know me?”

“No,” said Nicky.

“Maybe,” said Mr. Booker. The other two looked at him, and he made a sort of shrugging motion with his eyebrows. “Depends on what you call a problem. She won’t trust you right away, but she does need someone to help, so, you know, she’ll come around. Her bark’s worse than her bite. Usually.”

Nicky made a chiding noise with his tongue. “You make her sound a dragon. She’s a kind woman,” he said to Nile, “only a little gruff and still very sad.” As if he were finished with the subject, he looked back at the larder. “We have the makings of a lentil soup here—perhaps with carrots and onions, if you like. Does that strike your fancy, Miss Freeman?”

The spark of hunger in Nile’s stomach was beginning to grow, and she swallowed as her mouth suddenly watered. “That sounds wonderful, thank you. And please, call me Nile.”

“Nile,” Nicky repeated, a small smile hovering around his lips, and he began to take things from the larder and set them on the counter.

“Call me Joe, Nile,” said Mr. Jones. “As I’m sure you’ve already seen, the house is too big for the four of us, and kind of…eh, maybe ‘grim’ would be the right word. But we do the best we can, and you’ll be very comfortable here.” To Nicky, he said, “Love, you want me to boil you some water?”

Nicky, who was cutting onions with impressive speed, looked over his shoulder at Joe without ever stopping his cutting and said, “Yes, please.”

As Joe and Nicky fell into a kind of rhythm, moving around each other cutting vegetables and fetching seasonings with the confidence of people who’d done the same thing so often they didn’t even need to look at each other to be completely in sync, Mr. Booker sidled up next to Nile. She waited for him to speak, but he didn’t, and she couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t make her sound nosy, so they stood in silence and watched Joe and Nicky make soup.

When he finally spoke, it was in a low voice, as if he didn’t want anyone else to hear. “I’m sorry if I made it sound like Lady Andromache won’t welcome you here,” he said. “That wasn’t my intention.”

“That’s fine,” said Nile. “I don’t want to be rude, but this whole situation is odd enough that I could already tell Lady Andromache isn’t…very sociable.”

“Yeah,” Mr. Booker agreed, a wry grin turning the corner of his mouth up. “It is odd. And speaking of odd….”

He went quiet again, but Nile was tired and hungry and not optimistic about the prospect of a good night’s sleep in this drafty, dank house, and she wasn’t in the mood to be patient any longer. “What?” she asked.

“You should know,” he said slowly, “that strange things happen in this house sometimes. That is, you may see or hear…well. I don’t know. Strange things, is all I can say.”

“Strange how?” asked Nile, her brother’s ghost stories at the back of her mind. “What, is the house haunted?”

Mr. Booker sighed. “Not _haunted_ , exactly. More like cursed.”

“What?” Nile looked at him, eyebrows raised skeptically, but he showed no signs that he wasn’t being completely sincere. She’d heard that people in the country could be more superstitious, but she hadn’t really gotten that feeling from Mr. Booker. “Curses don’t exist anymore,” she said, immediately feeling that, whether or not he believed in curses, that it had been a pointless thing to say.

“Believe what you want to believe,” said Mr. Booker with a shrug. “I’m just telling you, if you hear a noise and you don’t know where it’s coming from, or you clean something one day and the next it looks like you didn’t do anything at all, don’t be frightened. Nothing and no one in the house will hurt you. And, ah. If you hear wolves in the woods at night—”

“Wait. There are wolves in the woods?” The rest sounded like the kind of thing that happened in an old, decrepit house, but wolves were something else altogether.

He nodded. “Don’t go into them at night. I mean, don’t go out at all at night until you know the land a little better, because it’s boggy and easy to get lost in. But my point is, the wolves won’t bother you if you leave them alone.”

“Mr. Booker,” said Nile, “you definitely don’t have to tell me to leave wolves alone. I’m interested in keeping all my limbs, thank you.”

Something strange passed over his face as she said this, a wistful kind of smile with nothing happy about it. But when he spoke, all he said was, “Just call me Booker.”

“Not a very formal household, is it?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Formality would be pretty strange, when it’s just us alone out here.”

In the distance, a wolf howled, as if in reminder that they were _not_ alone, and a shiver ran down Nile’s spine. She was so isolated here. If anything were to happen….

“Mmm, you’re cold. We can’t have that,” said Nicky. “Here, sit down you two. Soup is ready.”

If nothing else, thought Nile a few minutes later, she’d eat well at Scythian Woods. Nicky’s soup was hearty and filling, simple but flavorful, and the more she ate the better she felt. There was something about sitting at the kitchen table breathing in the fragrance of onions and garlic with a buttery slice of bread next to her bowl that reminded her of her mother’s kitchen at home.

There was little conversation, as the three men devoted themselves to their own bowls, but the atmosphere had become warmer and less fraught, and by the time they had finished, much of Nile’s tension had melted away.

She had scarcely finished her soup when a large yawn split her face. “Excuse me,” she said, too full and warm to worry overmuch about manners.

“Nothing to excuse,” said Joe with a smile. “You’ve had a long day.”

Nicky stood from the table and gathered Nile’s bowl to set in the washbasin. “Come, we’ll show you your room.”

Nile hesitated—with a staff so small, it seemed unfair of her not to offer help with the clearing away, especially since Nicky and Joe had done the cooking. “I can wait and help clean,” she offered, but Nicky shook his head.

“No need, we can do it. There will be time enough for you to help, but tonight you should rest.”

Joe pushed his chair away from the table to bring his own bowl to the washbasin. “We hope you like the room, Nile,” he said. “We cleaned it, changed the linens, built a fire and all that, so it should be comfortable, but if it’s not, let us know. There are plenty of other rooms in the house to pick from.”

Good manners would probably dictate that Nile assure them the room would be fine, but at this point, she honestly didn’t know what to expect, so she just nodded. “Thank you.”

“If you want to wash before bed,” said Booker, “there’s a bath chamber next to your room, and we’ve got pipes and a boiler, but they’re not reliable. If they’re not working, we can pump and heat wash water in the kitchen.”

The idea of a bath was tempting, but not as much as the idea of bed. “That’s all right,” she said.

Booker nodded. “Okay. Remember what I said about the strange things.”

Nile remembered.

She expected that a manor the size of Scythian Woods had a servants’ quarters, but Joe and Nicky led her up the grand, if cracking, central staircase and down a long, formal-looking corridor to a room that would probably have been one of the family rooms if Lady Andromache had had children or other relatives to live in the house with her. Nile’s hunch was confirmed when Joe said, “Lady Andromache’s down at the very end of the hall. Nicky and I are across from you, and Booker’s on the other side of the bath chamber, so if you need anything, we’re there.”

“And in case you do not,” said Nicky, “your door locks from the inside.”

She blinked, not having expected either such a measure of privacy or an announcement about it, but she was grateful to know she’d have a place to go in case things with Lady Andromache or any of the men took a sour turn.

The room itself was huge, grand rather than cozy, but it had been recently scrubbed and dusted within an inch of its life. A big old-fashioned four-poster bed with a faded blue coverlet and matching curtains jutted into the center of the room. A wardrobe of a dark reddish wood, a small dressing table that had probably been made to match the wardrobe, a nightstand that had _not_ , and a washbasin stood against the walls, which were covered in an ornately floral wallpaper, and a richly patterned rug that looked too fine to walk on covered the floor in front of the bed. A fire burning in the hearth radiated warmth.

All in all, it was a pleasant surprise, and Nile didn’t have to be politely dishonest to tell Nicky and Joe that the room was lovely and to thank them.

“No thanks needed,” said Joe, “but you’re welcome.” He smiled. “We’re glad to have you here.”

“We keep fairly early hours here, usually,” Nicky said. “Breakfast is usually a bit after sun-up, around seven this time of year, and supper around six-thirty, but if you’re late down tomorrow, it won’t be a problem.”

Lateness had been a problem at any job Nile had ever had, she thought wryly, which was unfortunate given her recent inability to convince herself to get out of bed in the morning, but to Nicky and Joe she said, “You don’t need to worry. We kept early time in the navy, too, so I’m used to it.”

“Right,” said Joe, nodding. “Okay, well, if you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask. Good night.”

“Good night.”

Halfway out the door, Nicky turned. “Just so you know,” he said, “we sometimes have rather odd sleep habits. I am a terrible insomniac, and Booker likes to stay up reading, that sort of thing. So if you hear walking or talking at night after we have all gone to bed, that’s why.”

“All right,” said Nile, too tired to give the matter any more thought.

If he and Booker and Joe did wander the halls at night, Nile missed it entirely. She was already half-asleep as she put out the fire in the fireplace and changed into her nightdress and hair bonnet, and darkness overtook her completely as soon as her head hit the pillow.

She woke well-rested but disoriented, maybe in the middle of a dream, though she couldn’t remember any details of it but a woman with long black hair petting a dog. It took her a moment to remember where she was, and when she did, a thrill of nerves sent a cold wave through her. Today she’d meet Lady Andromache, and begin her life as a lady’s companion. Whatever that meant.

Whether it was the sudden rush of anxiousness, which banished any lingering sleep, or curiosity about the mysterious Lady Andromache, Nile wasn’t sure, but she was quicker about getting washed and dressed than usual. She tucked her braids into a simple bun and threw on a plain but well-made dress, the paused to take stock of things. In the morning light, her room looked less grand and more dingy, but it had been comfortable, certainly more so than her berth in the navy, or the tents where she and her shipmates had occasionally camped on engagement. There was an eerie quiet outside, none of the cheerful birdsong of home, only the mournful croak of a raven, but the sun at least was bright, managing to poke through the dark trees outside Nile’s window.

It was early still—the sun rose early this far north, but it was still glimmering on the eastern horizon when Nile made it downstairs. She supposed that breakfast would be in the manor’s formal dining room, since the lady was meant to be eating with her, but she didn’t actually know where that was, so she decided to head back to the kitchen. If Nicky was really in charge of the food, as it seemed like he was, then he’d probably be there and could tell her where to go.

When she reached the kitchen, however, she stopped short. Joe, Nicky, and Booker were all seated around the table, boiled eggs and rolls with jam on plates in front of them, and seated across from Joe was a woman Nile didn’t know.

She was thin but strong-looking, with short dark hair and broad shoulders whose muscles Nile could see move under her riding habit as she buttered a roll. She looked—Nile didn’t know how she looked. Sad, maybe, but in a sharp, hard kind of way, more than a weeping kind of way. And none of it, the sharpness or the hardness or the sadness, made her anything less than jaw-droppingly beautiful.

Nile swallowed.

The mystery woman’s eyes flicked up to her, gray and piercing, and a knife-thin smile lifted the corners of her lips. “So,” she said. “You’re the new girl.”

Booker cleared his throat and stood, brushing crumbs off his lap as he did. “Lady Andromache,” he said, “may I present Nile Freeman? Miss Freeman, Lady Andromache.”

Of course. Of course. Whatever foolish ideas Nile had had of Lady Andromache being some sour old woman melted away under the heat of her embarrassed attraction. Hopefully she hadn’t been staring. She stood a little taller, grateful that her complexion made it difficult to tell when she was blushing, and tried to look polite and competent. It suddenly occurred to Nile that she had never met anyone who could actually be called a lady, unless you counted her lieutenant in the navy, which Nile didn’t. Feeling wrong-footed, she curtsied and said, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, milady.”

“Hm.” Lady Andromache looked her up and down coolly. “Welcome to Scythian Woods, I guess. Sit down and have some breakfast.”

From his seat next to Joe, Nicky glanced between Lady Andromache and Nile. He gave Nile a small, reassuring smile as he stood and gestured toward the place that had been set for her at the table. Standing and moving over to the counter to where a teakettle and a ceramic pitcher stood, he said “Please. We have tea and hot chocolate to drink, if you like.”

“Tea, please,” she said, seating herself. With a wink, Joe filled her plate with eggs and a buttered roll.

“More chocolate while you’re up?” said Lady Andromache. Nicky set Nile’s tea down and poured hot chocolate for the lady, and Nile watched in fascination as she added three heaping spoonfuls of sugar to it.

Nile hadn’t known what to expect from a grieving noblewoman, but it wasn’t that she’d load her drink with sugar and shovel food into her face like Elijah after a day out with his friends. It was as if Nile—or, for that matter, the three men—weren’t there at all.

Nicky sat down again with a small pot of honey which he slid over to Joe, and Joe gave him an affectionate glance before spreading it on his own roll. To Nile, Joe said, “Did you sleep all right?”

“Very, thank you. The room was very comfortable.”

“Well, we’ll see how long that lasts.” Lady Andromache didn’t look up as she said it, but it was clear the words were directed at them, and Nile felt herself flush again, this time with irritation. Joe sent the lady a sharp look, and Booker raised his eyebrows. Lady Andromache looked up from her plate and wiped her hands on her napkins. She ignored Joe and Booker and said to Nile, “I can’t imagine you’ve missed the fact that the house is crumbling around our ears.”

How did one diplomatically agree with something like that? “It’s a big house for three men to take care of,” she said.

Lady Andromache snorted. “I could have a whole army out here and it wouldn’t change the facts.”

That sounded like a self-fulfilling prophecy. But it might be a bit much to argue with one’s employer’s household management the very first day of the job, no matter how dreadfully she’d neglected her manor and overburdened her staff, so Nile schooled her face into a polite expression, made a vague noise of agreement, and took a sip of her tea.

Nicky’s eyes flicked from her to Lady Andromache, and he said, “Andrei told us last night that the bridge by Mr. and Mrs. Chapman’s farm needs repairs. Joe thought that he might see to that today.”

“Sounds good,” said Lady Andromache with a nod. “I’ve got that business with the Warrens’ pasture wall to deal with.”

“Will you need any help with that?” asked Booker.

She shook her head. “No. Do your thing with the kitchen garden, and Nicky….” She flapped a hand at Nicky. “Do whatever it is you were going to do today.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Nicky, looking amused.

Nile supposed it was all well in good for Booker, Nicky, and Joe to set their own marching orders—they probably knew far more about what needed to be done on the manor than the lady herself—but she didn’t like the feeling that as far as Lady Andromache was concerned, Nile herself didn’t exist. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said, “but nobody’s said anything about what I’m supposed to do as your lady’s companion. Nicky’s letter said I was to help you with the management of the estate. I led a small unit in the navy, milady, so I know a few things about logistics. I’m happy to help however you think I’d be useful.”

Lady Andromache glanced at Nile, her cool grey eyes measuring her up in a way that reminded Nile of inspections in the navy. After a moment, she leaned back. “Lady’s companion, huh?” she said. “Well. I don’t particularly need a lady’s companion, but if I think of anything you can do, I’ll let you know.” She stood up, pushing her chair from the table. “It’s an hour’s ride at least to the Warren farm,” she announced to the table at large. “I’ll be back by four.” To Nile, she said, “Nice to meet you, Miss Freeman.”

 _Wish I could say the same_ , Nile thought, but she was spared from having to say anything at all by Booker’s asking, “You want me to saddle a horse for you, boss?”

To this, Lady Andromache made a rude noise. “Since when do I need anyone to saddle a horse for me?” With no further comments, she strode out of the room.

As her footsteps faded, Nile swallowed, a bitter taste in her mouth that had nothing to do with the fresh-cooked food she’d been eating, which was delicious. Taking a deep breath in and letting it out slowly through her nose, she looked up to where the three men were exchanging rueful expressions. “Did you even _tell_ her you were hiring me?” she asked, trying to keep her irritation from her voice.

“Yes,” said Joe ruefully. “She agreed it was for the best.”

Nicky sighed. “She doesn’t like to need help. I’m sorry. As Booker said, though, she will warm up to you.”

“Well, no offense, but what am I supposed to do until then? How am I supposed to fill a position that doesn’t have any responsibilities and where my employer doesn’t even want me here?”

“Look around,” said Booker with a shrug. “Does it look like we’re short on things to do around here? Why not stay here today with Nicky and me and get to know the house a little better? I’m working on weeding and clearing up the kitchen garden, in hopes I can get it to produce something edible, and Nicky is…what are you doing again?”

“First I am cleaning up breakfast,” said Nicky. “And then I am starting on the pies for lunch so that the crust has time to rest before I make the filling. And then I’m cleaning the library. The library is like an anchor around my neck,” he said to Nile. “I am always cleaning and fixing it, and it is always in need of more cleaning and fixing, but there are a great many interesting books in it, so if you’re looking for something to keep you occupied until the details of your position have been worked out, feel free to come and read any book that you like.”

A few more breaths, and Nile felt she was able to rid herself of the sting of Lady Andromache’s dismissal as she breathed out. Booker was right, after all, there was plenty to be done here, and making herself useful sounded a lot more appealing than following the lady around, doubtless getting ignored the whole time. “If you don’t mind,” she said, “maybe I can help Booker this morning and then work on the library with Nicky this afternoon?”

“Sounds good to me,” said Booker, and Joe smiled.

“Good. Great. We have a plan for the day.”

As it turned out, the estate did have a half-dozen horses who, unlike the stables they lived in, seemed well-taken care of and in excellent shape, and Nile joined Nicky and Booker in feeding them and bidding Joe farewell as he rode off to the Chapmans’ place, wherever that was. Once Joe had gone, and the straw covering the floor of the stables had been replaced, Nicky headed back into the kitchen while Booker gestured to Nile to follow her around to the back of the manor house.

“Here we have it,” he said, gesturing toward the little courtyard. “The kitchen garden, in all its glory.”

Nile took it in. It…well, it was clear that Booker tried. The vegetables and herbs were divided into neat rows and beds, with the paths clearly demarcated. Against the wall was a chicken coop that, if the different colors of wood on the roof and walls of it were any indication, had been recently repaired, occupied by a dozen disapproving-sounding hens. Nile didn’t have any real standards of grandness to measure this garden against, outside of novels, but it ought to have been more than fruitful enough for four people to feed themselves with.

And yet, maybe it wasn’t. For all the care Booker evidently took, all the plants—the ones that didn’t look actually _dead_ —seemed weak and yellowish and losing their fight against gravity. The only thing that seemed to be prospering was some sort of creeping ground ivy.

“Uh,” Nile said, not wanting to be rude. “It’s, ah, very nice.”

Booker laughed. “You’re a terrible liar, Nile. It’s fine, I have eyes. I know what it looks like.” He gave the garden a familiar, resigned kind of smile and sighed. “Like everything else around here, it’s an uphill climb making this thing work. It produces the odd vegetable now and then, and our ladies”—here he gestured to the chickens—“provide the eggs, but I’m not going to lie to you, this estate isn’t what you’d call self-sufficient. I hope you weren’t counting on a lot of home-grown country food, because we buy most of ours in town.”

It didn’t actually come as a surprise, seeing how shriveled everything looked, but it still struck Nile as sad—this grand estate that should have been a thriving center of the countryside, and it seemed more like a burned-out ruin.

Some of Nile’s mother’s friends gardened—nothing like this, just little window boxes or pots with herbs, but she still cast her mind back to their talk about their plants, trying to think of something useful to say. “Have, uh, have you tried table scraps? For fertilizer? Or vegetable peelings, eggshells, that kind of thing? My mother’s neighbor swears by them.”

Turning his smile to her, Booker said, “I have, but your mother’s neighbor is right, it’s a good idea. I’ll go bother Nicky for some after luncheon.” He gestured with his head toward a particularly thick patch of the ground ivy. “My plan for this morning was to pull out as much of that stuff as I can. Sound all right to you?”

“Just fine,” said Nile.

They worked in silence in the cool gray morning. After the uncertainty of the last few…well, months, honestly…it was a relief to have something solid and real to do. Nile’s dress was getting dirty from kneeling next to Booker, and the weeds hurt her hands, but she found she didn’t mind; there was something companionable about sitting next to him, pulling out clumps of the ground ivy and tossing them into the wheelbarrow on the path behind them.

She’d fallen into a sort of meditative lull, and when one of the chickens let out a loud, protesting cry—apparently alarmed at one of its fellows puffing its feathers out, making it appear twice its usual size—she was so startled she accidently flung the clump of ivy she’d been pulling at into Booker’s face.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to do that!”

He snorted with laughter, brushing dirt off his face. “Hey, I’ll say one thing—it definitely woke me up.” He rolled his shoulders, wincing. “This isn’t exactly the most thrilling work.”

“No,” Nile agreed. His shrug reminded her of the stiffness in her own shoulders and arms, and she paused to stretch them above her head. It was a little like waking up after a nap, her awareness of her body and the courtyard around her flowing back as she wiggled her fingers and flexed her muscles. “Do you mind if I ask how you came to be working for Lady Andromache in the first place?” She didn’t want to be nosy, but now that she was fully awake again, she was once again filled with curious irritation about Lady Andromache’s dismissal of her at breakfast.

“No, I don’t mind,” said Booker, but he frowned, and Nile wondered if the story was an unhappy one.

He appeared to mull over her question for a long moment before saying, “I used to be a soldier.”

So Nicky had said in his original letter to Nile. She nodded at Booker with what she hoped was an encouraging smile.

“I didn’t really _want_ to be a soldier, but the circumstances were…I couldn’t get out of it. Things went poorly for me, and I…almost died.”

Nile felt her smile sag. Booker’s words hit close to home, and she felt a sense of kinship with him, but not a happy one.

“Lady Andromache and her wife--Quỳnh--found me, and got me out of it. Gave me a place with them, helped me get back to my family. I don’t know now what would have happened if they hadn’t, but suffice to say that my life would have been very different.”

“Your family?” Nile asked, still wrapping her head around the rest of it.

Booker had been giving her a crooked, not entirely happy grin, but at this it vanished, and his face once again had that hangdog sadness she’d seen in it the previous night. “They died,” he said simply, and Nile winced.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He shrugged. “It was a long time ago, now. Feels like another lifetime, really, remembering my wife and sons.”

Nile thought of her own mother’s tears when Nile had come home, and thought she understood now where that sorrow that clung to Booker came from. She reached to grasp his hand, not letting herself feel the rudeness of the act. “I’m sorry,” she said again, for lack of anything better to say.

He seemed as lost for words as her, but eventually he said, “Well. Anyway. Lady Andromache and Lady Quỳnh moved out here, and it wasn’t as if I had anywhere better to go, so here I am.”

The hollow melancholy in his voice had gone, replaced by a kind of stiff awkwardness, and Nile removed her hand from his, searching for a way to change the subject. “What was Lady Quỳnh like?” she asked, before it occurred to her that _that_ wasn’t likely to be a very happy subject, either. Nile inwardly shook her head at herself. She really wasn’t making a good showing of herself this morning when it came to polite conversation.

Booker didn’t seem bothered, though, even seemed a bit relieved for the subject change, giving her a wistful smile. “Lady Quỳnh? She…was a bit of a force of nature, if you know what I mean.”

“That sounds…fun?” tried Nile. If she was a force of nature the way her wife was, Nile didn’t really envy Booker, Nicky, and Joe the obvious years they’d spent working for Andromache and Quỳnh.

He laughed at that. “It was, actually. She was the kind of person who was really interested in life, you know—always ready to go see new places and try new things. You never met anyone who knew so many games or tricks.” Some of the laughter faded from his face, and he added, “She didn’t trick _people_ , though—she was a very honest woman, and not the kind to put up with bullshit. And I can’t even tell you how she loved Lady Andromache.” He swallowed. “Everyone, really. To be a part of her family was and is a grand honor.”

“She sounds wonderful,” Nile said softly.

As if in agreement, something made a loud rasping croak, and Nile turned her head to see a large raven sitting on the little fence Booker had built around his tomato plants. “Oh, damn,” she said. “Shoo!” She waved a hand at the raven, but it only tilted its head at her as if to ask, _What nonsense is this, girl?_

She moved to stand, but Booker put a hand out to stop her. “Nah,” he said. “Let her sit. She likes to watch sometimes.”

Nile blinked at him. “Are you telling me you let this same bird hang around your garden on a regular basis?” At his nod, she let out a disbelieving laugh. “Well, no wonder you can’t grow anything in this garden! I don’t know a lot about farming, but I know you’re supposed to scare crows _away_ from the crops, not invite them in!”

Booker smiled crookedly at her. “Eh, she’s no trouble,” he said. “Besides, you know how smart ravens and crows are? They can recognize people, and they know their friends from the ones that give them grief. This garden has enough troubles, the last thing I want is to get on this girl’s bad side.”

The raven croaked again as if in agreement.

By the time noon rolled around, the hard physical work meant that both Nile and Booker had worked up a hearty appetite, and it was with profound satisfaction that Nile sat down with Booker and Nicky to luncheon, a spicy chicken stew that Nicky claimed would give her energy for the rest of the day. She believed him—it was delicious, and she felt immediately refreshed after eating it.

After luncheon, Booker went back outside to tackle the ivy on the façade of the house—apparently, creeping ivy was the theme of his tasks for the day—and Nicky gestured to Nile to follow her. To her mild surprise, they didn’t go directly to the library, instead taking a detour through a small side corridor to retrieve various supplies from a closet. Said supplies included boards, hammers, and a heavy package wrapped in brown paper that, according to Nicky, contained new panes of glass for the window. Evidently, their work in the library wouldn’t just be a cleaning.

When Nicky, his hands full, pushed open the heavy-looking library doors to let Nile in, she let out an involuntary gasp. The place was a _mess._ It looked like the window had broken during a storm or something—someone had cleared up the broken glass and nailed boards over the window, but they hadn’t been quick enough to keep the wooden floors from getting wet, and the boards underneath the windows were visibly rotting and pungent with mildew. Lady Andromache—or more likely, Nicky and Booker and Joe—had taken steps to protect the books, removing them from the shelves closest to the window and covering some of the farther shelves with oilcloth, but the library, which would have been absolutely gorgeous under other circumstances, with its high ceilings and warm-colored wooden furniture, looked like the elements had done their best to destroy it.

“Ah, you look exactly like Joe did when he first saw this place after the storm,” Nicky said. “I would tell you not to worry, we’ll fix it soon enough, but knowing this place…” He shrugged laconically. “Well, it is what it is, and we shall deal with it.”

“Damn,” said Nile, unable to keep the curse in. “Between this and the garden, it seems like this house gives you all _a lot_ to deal with.”

Nicky’s mouth curled down, and he tilted his head as if in acknowledgment. “So it does.”

Nile was no carpentry expert, but she’d needed to help her mother do minor repairs around their city townhouse when she was young and had needed at least basic repair skills onboard ship in the navy, so she knew enough to help Nicky pry up the rotting wood of the floors and hold the replacement boards steady while he nailed them in place. “We’ll need to sand and polish them,” he said when they’d done that, “but that can wait for another day—let’s replace the window now. It’s terribly dark in here, don’t you think?”

It wasn’t as if the day had gotten bright and beautiful, and indeed, Nile would have been hard-pressed to trace the progression of the sun from where it had been in the morning, given the thick cover of gray clouds, but it _did_ lighten the atmosphere in the library once they’d pulled the boards off the tall arched window and readied the frames for the new panes. Unlike the weeding, this work wasn’t so mindless, and Nile pulled back to watch in fascination as Nicky removed old putty and window glazing from the sill and frames and carefully put the new glass in.

“That looks _much_ better,” Nile complimented. “With a little bit of sunlight, you can really see how pretty this room is.”

“That’s kind of you to say,” Nicky said with a half-smile, looking around. _Pretty_ had maybe been a bit of an overstatement, Nile could admit to herself, but it _did_ look a lot better. It was the kind of airy, book-filled space that Nile would have loved to have in a home—the tall ceilings and windows made the room feel larger than it was, though it was already pretty large, and the walls, white-plastered with soft green paper underneath rather than paneled, where they weren’t lined with shelves, made it seem lighter. Nile could imagine what the place would look like if it weren’t so run-down, and just as with the garden, it made her sad. For three men to be pouring _so_ much work into a house that looked ready to fall down at any time struck her as a cruel waste of their time, and she wondered why they stayed at Scythian Woods.

“So, what’s the next step?” she asked, clearing her throat.

Nicky shot a glance at the piles of books stacked against the far wall, where they’d undoubtedly put them to keep them from the rain. “I think we must put the books back on the shelves,” he said. “I cannot clean the floors here until they are not covered in books.”

“All right,” she said, stepping over to survey the bookstacks. “Well, just tell me where to put them, and I’ll help.”

“Hmm.” Nicky made a face. “They’re not really…it’s not a very intuitive system we have, for arranging the books. I think maybe it will be best if you hand me them, and I put them on the shelves.”

“Fair enough,” said Nile, wondering what the hell kind of system they had. “Where should I start?”

As they reshelved books, Nile thought she understood why Nicky had been reluctant to let her shelve them wherever, because the collection was strange. Wonderful, but very strange. There were books among the piles that she recognized, leather-bound volumes of poetry she’d read in school or fresh, recently purchased novels, but there were also loads of books not only in languages she didn’t recognize but alphabets she didn’t recognize. There were old printed books with engraved plates illustrating the anatomy of birds, heavily annotated books full of some kind of chemistry equations, a set of books without titles that appeared to be hand-illustrated with lovely watercolors of flowers and pastoral scenes. There were even books that Nile supposed to be manuscripts from hundreds of years ago—she couldn’t read the text within them, which was written in jagged old-fashioned script in languages she didn’t know, but she could recognize that they were written on parchment rather than paper, and the style of the illustrations was something she’d only ever seen in textbooks or stained glass windows in churches.

“My _God_ ,” she said, leafing through a book of what looked like poetry in which every page started with a beautifully rendered capital letter decorated with flowers and vines, “where did Lady Andromache _get_ all these?”

Nicky, who had found a step ladder and was replacing books on the top of a bookshelf next to the window, looked back over his shoulder at her and smiled warmly. “Many of them she did not get at all,” he said. “Joe and Booker and I have always been the book-lovers of this household, and we have been collecting them for years.”

“Huh.” Nile had supposed that the collection was passed down from Lady Andromache’s family, collected by a variety of ancestors over the generations, and so probably nobody actually read most of the older stuff. But if the bulk of the collection had been gathered by Joe and Nicky and Booker…she looked at Nicky, wondering which of the languages in these books that he could read, and which he had bought because he was interested in them, and whether the Lady Andromache that Nile had met would really have gone out of her way to maintain a library so that her household staff could collect rare books. Perhaps it had been Lady Quỳnh who’d encouraged them—from what Booker had said, she sounded like the kind of woman who might have been interested in strange old books.

“You look as if you have questions,” Nicky said. He stepped down off the ladder and walked over to Nile and held out his hand with a questioning look at the book in her hand, as if to say, _May I have that?_ She handed to him and he took it gently with both hands, smiling at it as if it were an old friend.

“Yes,” Nile agreed. “I have a _lot_ of questions. Like, multiple questions per book in this library. I feel like you could spend a _lifetime_ just reading the books in this library.”

Nicky transferred his small smile to her. “You could.”

“But I guess the first question I’d have is…if Lady Andromache doesn’t really care about books, why let you keep your collection here and spend so much of your time trying to keep the library from falling apart? Is it just a status thing?” Even as she proposed the possibility, it sounded stupid to her—what noblewoman who cared about status would live in a ruin of a building like this?

Nicky’s expression was sad now, and he stroked a thumb back and forth along the spine of the book as if pondering what he would say to Nile. In a voice that was solemn but not unkind, he said, “Lady Andromache might not care much for books, but she very much recognizes when knowledge is useful and should be preserved. And even if she did not, she cares for _us_ and wishes us to pursue the things that make us happy, to the extent that that is possible.”

Once again, Nile felt guilty for her anger at the woman, and annoyed at herself for her guilt. Lady Andromache seemed like an enormous frustration of an employer so far, and Nile didn’t know how anyone could think she was unjustified in her frustration. And yet her staff was obviously devoted to her—there was no way in hell they’d have stuck around if they weren’t—and it seemed at least a distinct possibility that Lady Andromache was devoted to them, too. At the very least, she didn’t seem to stand on ceremony with them, and if what Nicky said was true….She sighed. “I’m sorry,” she said, leaving it up to him to decide what she was sorry for.

“No,” he said, “I’m sorry. I know that you haven’t seen the best of her yet. She has…she has many burdens weighing on her.” He looked at the floor and pressed his mouth into a tight line, apparently pondering these burdens, before saying, “It has only been a day. I’m sure that you will both come to know each other better. I can already tell that we are lucky to have you here, Nile.”

It was hard to keep from smiling at that. Nicky had an earnest sincerity about him that made him easy to like, Nile decided, and between him and Booker, who was understandably a little melancholy but was generally good company, and Joe, whom Nile hadn’t seen much of but who seemed nice, she thought that maybe even if Lady Andromache never warmed to her, perhaps things here wouldn’t be so terrible.

Apparently picking up on this optimistic turn of thought, Nicky smiled again and said, “As I mentioned before, if you wish to read any of the books here, please feel free to. We have plenty to go around, as you can see.”

“I’ll say,” Nile said, a little overwhelmed by the prospect of finding something to read among this menagerie of books, and Nicky laughed.

“Why don’t you look through those,” he suggested, nodding toward the stacks of books that still remained on the floor. “I’m going to do some dusting before I clean the floors tomorrow, but if you have any questions, please ask.”

Nile spent the next half hour or so digging through the piles of books. It was a challenge to find something that suited—given the qualifications of being in a language Nile could read, being printed or handwritten in a legible hand, and being about something that sounded interesting, a large number of books met only one or two of her requirements. Many of the books were about extremely niche subjects, and though some of them sounded fascinating—Nile set aside a book about continental sculpting techniques for a time when she could really sit down with it and focus—they were often in dense, scholarly discourse that would be more of a chore than a pleasure to read. She had initially thought that the leather-bound book labeled “Liber virium naturae et magicae” was one of this sort, but her eye was caught by the diagrams, which had been printed by the original publisher but added to by some annotator with a pen. She lay the book open on the floor and studied it.

It was of a plant, drawn on one page as withered and dying and, on the facing page, strong and upright. Lines radiating from the diagram were labeled things like “Energy of the sun,” “force of the wind,” “pull of gravity,” “force of water.” In and among these more prosaic descriptions was a line marked “pattern of magic.” Raising an eyebrow, she read the descriptions underneath the diagrams.

From what she could gather, the author was explaining how the natural forces that contributed to the life and death of plants and animals could be manipulated to make sick things well. It sounded like some intense hocus-pocus, frankly, but there was something fascinating about the way that someone had added in notes in the margins and drawn little pictures of wilting flowers, like they’d actually tried whatever it was the author was suggesting.

She looked up to ask Nicky about it, and just about fainted when she saw a large raven sitting on the sill of the library window.

“Are you all right?” Nicky asked with a frown.

“Fine,” she said. “Just wasn’t expecting to see a giant bird just…sitting there.”

Nicky looked at the bird, not quite smiling but with an expression of warm familiarity on his face. “Sometimes it’s nice to have a visitor,” he said.

Nile thought about mentioning the raven that had watched her and Booker weeding that morning, but decided against it—maybe ravens could recognize humans, but she couldn’t recognize ravens, and there was no reason to think this was the same one from before. Maybe a colony of ravens, or whatever you called a group of them, had claimed this place as its home. If the people who actually lived here were all right with them, Nile supposed she had no call to object.

She turned her attention back to the book she had been looking at, thinking it was a shame that someone hadn’t manipulated the natural forces or whatever to make this house less of a dump. Then she flipped the page, and her breath caught in her throat.

Someone had drawn a raven in the upper right-hand corner of the page.

***

As the afternoon wore on, Nicky began to look anxiously at his pocket watch, until finally he said to Nile, “I’m sorry to leave you, but I need to go and start preparing dinner.”

Nile sat up from where she’d been engrossed in the strange book. “It seems a little early for that, doesn’t it?” It was still difficult to tell where exactly the sun was, but Nile didn’t think it could be past four or four-thirty in the afternoon.

“It will take time,” Nicky explained. “I need to—”

Whatever it was he needed to do, Nile didn’t get to hear, because at that moment, the doorbell chimed, and some of the tautness in Nicky’s face smoothed out as a voice from the front hall called, “Nicky! I’m home!”

“Ah,” he said unnecessarily, “Joe is back.”

Taking the book with her, Nile trailed Nicky to the front hall, where Joe smiled tiredly and greeted them. He’d left off his more fashionable clothes today, given that he’d been going to fix a bridge, and he looked tired and a little grimy around the edges. Yet, his smile at Nicky as they greeted each other lit his face such that Nile felt a jolt in her own heart at seeing such naked affection, and she swallowed, suddenly feeling a little lonely.

She didn’t have time for such moping for long, though, because Joe turned his brilliant smile on her and said, “Nile! How was the first day? Have Nicky and Booker shown you around the place?”

“Well,” Nile said, “I’ve seen the library and the kitchen garden, and those were, uh….”

“Not very impressive, but she was very helpful,” Nicky finished.

Joe made a _tsk_ ing sound with his tongue. “No grand tour, eh? Good thing I’m back—there are all kinds of things in the house you should know about.”

“Don’t you need to wash up for dinner?” asked Nile, but Nicky and Joe both shook their heads.

“We have time,” said Nicky. “The beans need to boil.” To Joe, he said, a little of his earlier anxiousness returning, “Andromache?”

“I saw her on the way back,” Joe said reassuringly. “Passed her over by the Wilsons’ place. She’ll be here in probably half an hour.” He leaned in and whispered something in Nicky’s ear, and a shadow passed over Nicky’s face. Nile would have asked what was wrong, but as he caught her eye, the sadness vanished from Nicky’s expression as if it had never been, and he smiled at her. Joe gazed fondly after him as he turned to go to the kitchen, and then he turned to Nile and said, “Come on—let’s start with the ballroom.”

Nile wasn’t surprised at how decrepit the ballrooms and drawing rooms and guest suites that Joe walked her through were—at this point, she would have been far more surprised had they actually been polished and luxurious and in good repair. She was, however, kind of surprised at how full the house was of things that were apparently dear to Joe and of great interest. Lady Quỳnh had commissioned the pianoforte in the music room, he informed Nile, and they had used to have music nights—Nicky was apparently a fine singer, and Joe knew how to the harpsichord, and Lady Andromache played everything under the sun. The map hung above the fireplace in the musty Blue Drawing Room, according to Joe, represented a grand tour Lady Andromache and Lady Quỳnh had taken across three continents. It had taken two years to complete, but they considered it time well spent, as they’d eaten every sort of food imaginable and taught themselves how to shoot sport rifles. The bronze drum in the Green Drawing Room was from Lady Quỳnh’s home country—not that she’d brought it from there personally, Joe informed Nile, but she’d seen in a marketplace sometime before settling in at Scythian Woods and thought it would be a nice reminder of bygone days.

Joe had a pleasant, matter-of-fact way of telling Nile these things, not like a tour guide so much as a storyteller building a world for her, a world where Lady Andromache and Lady Quỳnh had been together and Scythian Woods had been as grand as any place Nile could imagine but twice as fun.

It was…strange, to picture Lady Andromache not as the brisk, rude woman she’d been at breakfast, weighed down by a failing estate and grieving a loss that Nile was only beginning to see the shape of, but as the vibrant head of a happy, prosperous household, with her vivacious wife at her side. Nile wondered what it would have been like to meet _that_ Lady Andromache—or if, perhaps, if _that_ Lady Andromache was still around, whether they wouldn’t have met at all.

Joe paused for a moment, apparently out of things to say for the moment, and Nile saw how his shoulders sagged. After a day of fixing bridges, she reflected, he must have been exhausted. “Who are the Chapmans?” she asked.

Not apparently expecting the question, Joe looked up with a mild look of pleased surprise. “Oh, Mr. and Mrs. Chapman and their son Thomas live about three miles from the manor house, along the main road. You’ll have passed by there yesterday. The bridge is on the other side of their house from the road, and they use it to get to the market at Riverside—that’s where we do a lot of the more basic shopping.”

“Do you have to fix it very often?” Andrei’s report the previous day had had the tone of routine news.

“More than I’d like, I’m afraid,” Joe said with a sigh. “We had heavy rains three or four nights back, and the bridge supports have a tendency to give out when the river floods.”

Like everything else, Nile reflected—perpetually falling apart.

Somewhere a clock chimed, and Joe’s face went alert. “Ah,” he said, “almost time for supper. I need to go wash. You know how to get back to the kitchen from here?”

Nile nodded; the layout of the house was sprawling but not particularly complicated.

“Excellent,” said Joe, “see you at supper, then. Congratulations for making it through the first day here!” He clasped his hands together and brandished them in Nile’s direction in a victory salute.

She had to laugh at the effusive silliness of it, but thanked him and waved him off to get himself cleaned up.

When she reached the kitchen, Booker, Nicky, and Lady Andromache were already there. She’d expected the two men, but despite having breakfast with the woman there that morning, she was still caught off-guard by Lady Andromache’s appearance. She’d told herself over the course of the day that she’d been ridiculous that morning, the lady wasn’t _that_ beautiful.

As it turned out, she was that beautiful. And as infuriating as ever. She was sitting at the table sipping a glass of wine as Booker nursed a whiskey and Nicky busied himself with a small pile of fresh herbs. Her cool expression didn’t change as Nile came in, but she raised an eyebrow at her, apparently noticing Nile’s surprise.

“Lady Andromache,” she said in greeting.

“Miss Freeman,” said Lady Andromache.

Nicky looked from Lady Andromache to Nile, looked like he was thinking of saying something to the lady, and then thought better of it and said, “Have a seat, Nile. Supper will be ready in a moment. What would you like to drink?”

She ended up sipping a dark red wine with a sort of floral taste, sitting awkwardly as Booker and Lady Andromache focused entirely on their own drinks without speaking. She didn’t know if it was her presence making them so taciturn, but it was supremely uncomfortable.

The silence was soon interrupted, though, by Joe appearing at the kitchen door in a clean white shirt and dark jacket. “Am I late?”

Nicky smiled warmly at him. “Perfectly on time,” he said, setting a two-handled pot on a trivet on the table. “Pinot noir?”

“Please,” said Joe, lifting the pot lid to sniff.

Supper that night was some kind of shredded meat and beans served over corn grits—or, Nile supposed, polenta—and like everything else she’d eaten at Scythian Woods, it was delicious. Better still, once the food was being served and Nicky and Joe were seated, Booker and Lady Andromache pulled themselves out of their drinks a bit, enough to revive a little of the warm atmosphere Nile had enjoyed the previous evening.

“So,” Joe asked, “I didn’t get a chance to hear earlier, what’s the news with the Warrens’ wall?”

“Mortar dissolved a bit,” Lady Andromache said, the bite of food she’d taken pushed into her cheek as she chewed and talked at the same time. Nile blinked at this show of poor etiquette. “It was an easy enough fix. Which is good, because that big ram of theirs is having a rowdy spring.”

Booker laughed at that. “As always. Don’t know why we even call it the Warren farm, the place really belongs to that ram.”

“Is this another one of the estate’s tenants?” Nile wanted to know, refusing to be intimidated by the look Lady Andromache shot her.

“Yes,” answered Nicky. “They raise sheep. They’re perhaps four miles to the south—you’ll surely see them soon enough, they have one of the biggest plots on the estate and do quite a good business with the wool.”

“’Quite good’ being relative, here,” said Booker with a wry grin. “As I’m sure you can tell by now, nothing here’s really ‘quite good.’”

Joe laughed at this, while Nicky frowned and said, “ _Booker_ ,” in a quelling tone. Lady Andromache remained expressionless, though, focusing intensely on her food as if it was the most interesting thing in the room.

“I’d like to see them,” Nile said cautiously. “I hope that once I’ve gotten to know the estate a bit better, I’ll be able to help Lady Andromache with the…the work she does for the tenants.” She inwardly winced at the awkwardness of her words, but she couldn’t find a better way to say _I hope I can help Lady Andromache with whatever it is she does all day, seeing as it’s literally my job._

If she’d been looking for reassurances of any kind from the lady, she’d have been completely disappointed, because Lady Andromache’s grayish-green eyes flicked up to meet Nile’s briefly and she made an indifferent sort of grunt before saying, “Maybe.”

Well, _perhaps_ was better than _no, never, go away._

To Joe, Nicky, and Booker, she asked, “So, the Chapmans, the Warrens…I’m assuming Andrei’s family, right? Who are the other big tenants on the estate?”

She listened as closely as she could to their descriptions of the handful of other farmers who eked out a living on Lady Andromache’s land. Though she couldn’t imagine trying to farm in such a dismal place, she had to admit that Lady Andromache sounded like a pretty good landlady—her men were intimately familiar with the problems and needs of each farm, and how the families that lived there were doing, and from the mentions of repairs and upgrades, Nile guessed that each of them, and Lady Andromache, had made regular trips to the farms to either fix things themselves or oversee workmen putting in the improvements. It was certainly a more flattering line to add to her portrait of Lady Andromache; she had a few of those by now, but it didn’t make the woman any less frustrating.

Booker was halfway through a description of Andrei’s failed attempts at getting his mare to accept the attentions of a stallion when Lady Andromache pushed her chair away from the table. “Don’t get up,” she said, apparently to the room at large but probably to Nile. “I’m done for the night.”

The three men bid her goodnight, and Nile belatedly added her voice to the chorus as Lady Andromache strode out.

“Does she _always_ do this?” asked Nile. “Just storm out of the room before everyone else has even finished eating?”

“Not always, no,” said Nicky, sounding apologetic. “What with her and Joe both out today, supper was served a little later than usual.”

It wasn’t even six-thirty at night. The sun was only just now setting, its rays making Nicky’s carefully hung pots and pans shine with red and gold sparkles. Nile had heard that country people kept early hours, but that struck her as a little ridiculous. In apparent response to her bafflement, Joe said, “She’s had a long day, Nile. Fixing those stone walls is hard work, and something else always crops up when she goes on one of those visits to the farmers. She likes to go to bed early, and so we accommodate her however we can.”

 _And she’s our employer, and also yours, so don’t make a big fuss about it_ , seemed to be the subtext of Joe’s remark, so Nile swallowed another remark about how strange it all was and said, “So, do we have to go to bed, too? To make sure the house is quiet for her?”

“No,” said Booker with a chuckle. “Noise won’t bother her. And we’re not really the type to go to sleep early.” He gave Nile a measuring look. “You play cards, Nile?”

Booker beat Nile handily at piquet two games in a row while Joe and Nicky cleaned up the supper plates, though she gave him more of a run for his money on the third round. After the kitchen was cleaned, Joe proposed moving to the library.

In the fading light of the early evening, the fire reflecting off the new window panes, the library looked more cozy than disastrous, and Nile happily curled into one of the overstuffed armchairs with the strange book about magic she’d been reading earlier while Booker read what looked like a book of philosophical essays and Joe and Nicky played chess at a table in the window.

The author of the book seemed to take his mumbo-jumbo about magical forces very seriously—there was a whole chapter that was just equations about balancing different kinds of forces. Fortunately for Nile, who couldn’t make heads or tails of equations that included variables like “potency of magical aura,” the diagrams continued to be fascinating. One stretched across two pages, mapping out what the author referred to as ‘intensifiers of physical proximity,’ which as far as Nile could tell referred to spells or magical forces becoming stronger based on their distance from whatever it was you were supposed to be doing the spell on. Apparently, this was something the author thought could be diagrammed in a predictable way, though the pen annotator had drawn a skeptical little face in the margin that made Nile laugh.

“What’s that you’re reading, Nile?” Joe asked, making a move that had Nicky raising one eyebrow at him.

“I don’t know, I found it earlier,” said Nile, looking up from the diagram. “It’s some old pseudo-science thing about magic.”

Booker looked up from his book. Nicky moved his bishop, but rather than letting it go, tapped it a couple of times on the chessboard. He looked from Joe to Nile. Nile wondered if this was a particularly expensive book she shouldn’t have touched. But then again, Nicky hadn’t mentioned any books that were off-limits. And it wasn’t like _this_ library was a particularly safe place to keep valuable rare books, anyway.

“Magic, huh?” asked Joe casually. “Sounds interesting.”

“It is,” she said. “Was this one of the books you bought for the collection?”

“I don’t know,” Joe said. “I’ve certainly bought a lot of books over the years. Hold it up so I can see the cover?” She did, and he nodded. “Yes, all right, that is one of mine.”

“So, are you…interested in magic?” Nile ventured. It occurred to her that between Booker’s claiming the house was cursed and Joe buying magic books, she’d have to be careful about how she talked about the book—probably “mumbo-jumbo” wouldn’t go over too well.

“I am.” Joe moved a knight on the chessboard. “It represents whole systems of knowledge that I think people these days have lost a lot by relegating to the past.”

“Oh.” Nicky and Booker were looking at her, as if to see how she would answer this, and Nile felt suddenly very awkward. “Well, that’s…nice. I can’t say I know much about it.”

Nicky nodded. “No reason you should.” He captured Joe’s knight. Joe reached out and clasped his hand, twining their fingers together as they rested on the table, which was not usually how one responded to losing a piece in chess in Nile’s experience.

Nile felt a familiar kind of exhaustion--not from weeding or fixing the library floors, but the kind of tired she had felt after coming home to Mama and Elijah and watching them watching her, waiting for her to go back to normal, when she couldn’t even remember how normal felt.

She stood. “Well. I’ve had a long day. I think I’ll go to bed.” It was, at least, dark by now, so she wouldn’t look a complete hypocrite for her bafflement at Lady Andromache.

Straightening from the chessboard, Joe looked at her at last. “It has been a long day,” he agreed. “Sleep well, Nile.”

She traded goodnights with Booker and Nicky and turned to leave, feeling a prickling feeling at the back of her neck like someone was looking at her. But when she turned back to see if they were staring after her, she found that Booker had buried himself again in his book, and Nicky and Joe had returned to their chess game.

Strange, thought Nile. The whole thing was strange.

 _Dear Mama,_ she wrote once she’d gone upstairs and washed and changed into her night clothes, _I’ve reached Scythian Woods safely. So far, I haven’t seen too much of Lady Andromache—she’s a bit eccentric, but her staff seem to like her very much, and I take that as a good sign. Mr. Smith, the housekeeper who wrote to us, is a very good cook, especially given that there is no kitchen staff here and he does the cooking himself. He’s married to Mr. Jones, the estate manager, who spent the day today fixing a tenant’s bridge and can talk about just about anything you can imagine. I think he’s very well-traveled. Mr. Booker, the groundskeeper, is a little superstitious and a very sad person, but he was very kind to me. They’ve all been very kind. The house itself is falling apart like you wouldn’t believe, but I’ll do my best to help Lady Andromache take care of it. So far, I think I like the job. Give my love to Elijah, and keep an extra helping of it for yourself. I miss you, Mama._

Nile set down her pen and wiped a tear away from her eyes. She could finish the letter tomorrow, and perhaps make it sound a little less obvious how much she was faking her cheer. The sun had fully set now, and the room was pitch black when she blew out her candle.

Her dream that night came with a strange cold clarity. In the dream, she was looking at a woman, or perhaps she was the woman—her sense of self was vague in dreams sometimes. The woman was dressed in white, thin but strong, her hair flowing long and straight and black down the back of her dress, wisps of it fluttering around her face in the chill wind. Nile recognized where the woman was. It was the front drive of Scythian Woods, right outside the manor’s grand entrance. The woman herself looked oddly familiar, too, though Nile couldn’t quite place her.

The woman strolled down the front steps and past a lighted window, and through it, Nile could see Nicky, Joe, and Booker, still sitting in the library. They met the woman’s eyes, and Nile could feel a powerful, throbbing loneliness deep within her, a desire for something that was even worse because it seemed like it should be in reach.

Drifting past the window, the woman gazed up at the full moon, scarcely looking down at the driveway beneath her as she wandered over to the overgrown hedges and the scraggly copse of trees beyond them. Her eyes were on the sky, the trees. They weren’t on the dark undergrowth of the hedges, from which emerged a huge, snarling wolf.

Nile jolted awake in her bed, her heart racing, a cold sweat bathing her face. It was still dark in her room, and the house was quiet, but in the distance, she could hear the howling of a wolf.


	3. Chapter 3

She had a difficult time going back to sleep after her dream, every creak of the floors or rustle of tree branches (or distant wolf howl) dragging her back into consciousness, and so it was a groggy and irritable Nile who forced herself out of bed and down to breakfast the next morning.

Joe’s welcoming smile turned sympathetic as he saw her, and Nicky looked up from the stove to fix her with an assessing look. “You need something that will wake you up this morning, yes?” he asked.

“Very much yes,” said Nile, pointedly not looking at Lady Andromache to see what _she_ thought of her exhausted lady’s companion.

Booker, who looked like he was ready to fall asleep over his giant cup of coffee, perked up slightly and said, “For me as well, Nicky?”

“If you like. Joe, your syllabub, my love.” Nicky handed Joe something that looked like a glass of whipped cream with berries on top, and Joe rewarded him with one of those intense smiles that made it look like he didn’t notice anyone else in the room. Out of the corner of her eye, Nile saw Lady Andromache giving them a wistful look, and she felt a twist of sympathy in her stomach. She swallowed and forced herself to focus on the cup of tea Nicky set in front of her plate.

A few minutes later, he served her and Booker eggs scrambled with spicy tomatoes and peppers. It certainly _did_ wake her up, at least enough to take an interest in everyone else’s plans for the day. “I say we tackle the gutters today,” Joe was saying. “If it rains again before we’ve reattached that one in the northwest corner, that whole corner’s going to be a mess.”

“Sounds good,” said Lady Andromache, tackling her own cherry-filled pastry with gusto. The dark red fruit filling clung to the corner of her mouth.

“What are your plans, my lady?” asked Nicky casually. “You know we could always use another hand with the gutters.”

She shrugged, licking the cherry filling from her lips. Nile tried not to stare. “I’m sure you can handle it. I need to check on the roads out by the Lukyanovs’ place.”

“The roads,” repeated Booker, his tone a little…challenging, maybe. “Sure.”

Her eyes flicked up to his and she raised her eyebrows. “Yes, Booker. The roads.”

Perhaps now was Nile’s chance—Lady Andromache hadn’t seemed nearly so resistant to the idea of Nile’s presence the previous night as she had that morning. “Do you need any help doing that?” she asked. “I’ve been talking with Joe and Nicky and Booker about the tenants on the estate, and I’d love to start getting to know them and the land, if you’d like me to accompany you.”

Lady Andromache looked at her then, and she looked more tired than irritated as she said, “No, thanks, Miss Freeman. I’ll be fine. It’s kind of you to offer.”

“Maybe it would be for the best if she did go with you.” Joe’s tone was casual, but the look in his eyes as he met Lady Andromache’s was pointed. “It could be a good chance for you two to make each other’s acquaintances.”

“Oh, I think we’ll have plenty of time for that, Joe,” said Lady Andromache, her tone suddenly bitter. In a move that was rapidly becoming familiar, she stood and put her napkin on her plate, brushing crumbs from her hands. “I’ll see you all at supper,” she said. “Thanks for breakfast. I gotta go see a man about a horse.”

As soon as the door shut behind her, Joe groaned. Propping his elbow on the table, he rested his forehead against his hand. “Ugh. I shouldn’t have pushed.”

Nicky shrugged philosophically. “Sometimes she needs the push. Sometimes we miscalculate.” To Nile, he said, “I hope you won’t take it too amiss, Nile. As I’m sure you can tell, all of our jobs here are very flexible to meet the estate’s needs, and it seems that the job of lady’s companion is no different in this respect.”

“It’s fine,” said Nile, swallowing her own irritation. “What do you think she’s actually doing, though?” Booker’s skepticism about the road-checking thing had Nile thinking once more about smugglers and highwaymen.

“Who knows?” Booker asked. “The woman could be teaching her horse tricks, or she could be sending Andrei on errands she thinks we’ll disapprove of. Hell, maybe she’s even checking the roads, like she said.”

“At any rate,” said Joe, “she obviously won’t be hanging around here today.” He sighed. “I don’t know, maybe after the gutters I can spend some time with the books this afternoon. I’ve been thinking I might ask Copley to move some of our money around.”

“Why?” Booker was as sharp and alert as Nile had ever seen him, and she blinked at him in surprise. “You think another Merrick….”

Joe shook his head. “No, shh, nothing like that.” He gave Nile a rueful look. “Some unpleasantness a few years back,” he said, as if that were an adequate explanation. “No, I was only thinking about whether we might do a little more good by supporting local banks. I’ve been reading a bit about the role of financial institutions in promoting smaller farmers and businesses—or _not_ promoting them, and I thought perhaps we might write to Copley to ask him to find places where our money might rest a little more productively. That’s all.”

Nile thought about the exorbitant salary that they’d offered her to come be Lady Andromache’s “companion,” and about the crumbling state of the manor, and wondered just how much money they actually had that Joe worried about that kind of thing.

“That sounds like a good thought,” said Nicky. “If you’d like to do your correspondence in the library this afternoon, I still need to finish shelving the books and cleaning floors there this afternoon.”

Joe nodded. “You’re welcome to join us, Nile. I heard you enjoyed looking at the books yesterday.”

“I did,” said Nile, happy to move to a topic where she felt like she had something of substance to say. “I can’t believe you’ve managed to gather so many illuminated manuscripts! I’m not an expert, but I imagine any scholar or history, or literature, or natural sciences would jump at the chance to spend an afternoon in your library!”

“I’m sure you’re right,” said Booker with a grin, though something about it looked a little strained at the edges. “I’ll say one thing, having our books in one place is one advantage of…” He looked at Joe and Nicky for a moment, as if thinking of asking something, then turned back to Nile. “Life at Scythian Woods,” he finished.

The morning was overcast, but at least a bit less gray than the previous day had been, and in the soft sunlight, Nile thought she could see a kind of stark beauty in the battered lines of the manor house. It must have been lovely in the days when Lady Andromache and Lady Quỳnh had first come to occupy it. She wondered if it had been in Lady Andromache’s family, or if they had rented it for the purpose. Maybe they’d moved into it with the idea of bringing a run-down ancestral pile back to life, and it was only with Lady Quỳnh’s death that their quest had taken on its tragic impossibility.

Booker, Joe, and Nicky worked at fastening the gutters back in place and clearing them of dead and rotting leaves as if no one had told them that their restoration efforts were like bailing out a sinking ship with a teaspoon, so Nile did her best to match their good cheer. She helped to hold the ladders in place and scrubbed mildew from the stone walls and washed the windows with all the vigor she’d have put in if she were helping her mother clean the house for guests. She had to admit, there was a real sense of pride and accomplishment in seeing the results of their work afterwards—the corner of the house they’d been working on really _did_ look a lot better. It certainly wasn’t what she’d imagined when she’d accepted the job, but it did feel like a job well done.

“Can I ask you something?” she asked. Nicky looked up from the fresh batch of mildew-removing solution he was mixing, and Joe looked over his shoulder at her from where he was scrubbing at a discolored patch on the wall.

“Certainly.” Joe lowered the rag he was scrubbing with from the wall.

Nile wrung her own rag between her hands. “How…how exactly did you see my job as lady’s companion here working? It’s clear that Lady Andromache wasn’t the one who hired me. She doesn’t really seem to need or want my company—or anyone else’s, as far as I can see. I don’t mind helping you with the house, but I just…I just don’t understand exactly what you wanted when you hired me.”

Nicky and Joe exchanged looks. From where he was stood on the ladder, digging leaves out of the gutters with a gardening spade, Booker shouted, “Hey, what are you talking about down there?”

Nicky rolled his eyes. “Come on down, Booker,” he called up. “We’re talking about Lady Andromache.”

“Ah, yeah, down in a minute.” He set his spade down, and his friend the raven, which had been perched on the roof above him watching him work, glided down to sit on the grass near Nile. Nile eyed it suspiciously, but it didn’t make any move to approach her, just watched her with its beady little eyes.

As Booker clambered down, Joe made a face and said to Nile, “To be honest, we had more of a _hope_ than a _plan_ in hiring you.”

“And that hope was….”

“That Lady Andromache would allow someone to help her.” Nicky set the full bucket of mildew solution on the ground under the window and stood up to face Nile. “She carries…many burdens on her own, these days, and it is not so easy for us to help her with them.”

“What kinds of burdens?” Nile liked all of them, but the vagueness was making her itch with irritation.

Booker gestured broadly with an arm. “Take your pick. The crumbling house? The poor soil? The struggling tenants? Her wife?” The raven squawked as if adding to Booker’s list.

Joe gave him a slightly reproving look and said, “I’m sure you’ve noticed by now that Lady Andromache doesn’t trust easily. But when she _does_ trust you, or even more when she sees you as her responsibility, than she’s your friend for life. Now, the estate doesn’t have a lot of tenants these days. Most of them left years ago as the land got worse. But for the ones who remain, Lady Andromache will run herself ragged. She’s not just riding and brooding all day, you know—irrigation projects, shipping in fertilizer, upkeep on the roads, schooling for the children, she has a hand in all of it.”

“Although to be fair,” Booker put in, “she does do a lot of riding and brooding as well.”

“The _point_ ,” Nicky said heavily, “is that Lady Andromache will handle all of these difficult things, but as the years go by we find that she confides in us less and less about these difficulties. Perhaps we have all been here too long, I don’t know. We do not know if she will confide in you, or if you would welcome it if she did. But to _us_ , simply to have someone go out with her during the day to help her if she falls into a ditch or send messages to us if she should need us would be a great help.”

Nile digested all of this. It wasn’t…bad, exactly—it was better than she’d feared after that first morning. It was good to have confirmation that Lady Andromache cared so much for her people, at least. But what they were describing sounded as much like a nannying job for a grown woman as it sounded like anything. “It’s not exactly a typical lady’s companion job, is it?” Not that Nile knew much about these things, but she knew that much.

“It’s not glamorous, no,” Nicky said. “But believe me when I said you would be doing good.”

She conceded his point with a nod, though he was right to say it wouldn’t be a glamorous kind of good.

“Can I ask you something, Nile?” Joe had a thoughtful look in his eye.

As she’d done basically nothing but ask questions for the past two days, she could hardly refuse. “Of course.”

“What is it that _you_ wanted from this job?”

“Good point,” said Booker. “God knows _I_ wouldn’t have taken it if someone offered it to me now. Move to some decrepit ruin in the middle of nowhere and clean the gutters, pah!”

That startled a laugh out of Nile. “You seem to be pretty good at it, though.”

He shrugged. “It’s a gift. Honestly, though, Nile. What _is_ it that you want to do?”

“I mean, I don’t know,” she said. This was a question she’d been asked so many times since coming home from the war, and somehow the familiarity of it hadn’t made it easier to answer in all those months. “I’m not—I’m not complaining about the job I’m doing now. It’s not exactly a hardship to help you all out.”

“I assume this was not always what you wished for, though,” said Nicky. “And from knowing you, even after only a handful of days, I hardly think a typical lady’s companion position would have been satisfying to you, either.”

She blew out a puff of air, frustrated. “If I _knew_ what I wanted —” But this long-simmering frustration wasn’t with them, it was with herself, and taking it out on them wouldn’t help anything. She took a deep breath and held it, letting it out slowly until she felt her snappishness recede. “I always thought I’d make my career in the navy,” she said finally. “Like my father did. He was killed in action.” Before they could offer the typical apologies those words usually produced, she hurried on. “But after…after I was wounded in battle, things changed for me. I’d thought perhaps, if something happened to cut my naval service short, I’d go to university like my brother, but for some reason when I went home, the idea just didn’t appeal to me. Honestly, nothing did. So I suppose, if you’re asking what I want…I don’t know. I’d like to feel like I’m doing something worthwhile with my time. I’d like to make my mother proud. Beyond that, I can’t tell you.”

She felt her throat tighten as she cut her little speech off. She hated this small, weak feeling she got whenever she admitted it to herself, this huge uncertainty that colored her future a bewildering gray, and it was even worse to have admitted it to three men who were practically strangers to her.

But they were all looking at her not with pity, but with solemn understanding. “Those are good aims,” said Joe, his tone gentle but matter-of-fact. “I hope we can help you achieve them.”

“Yeah,” said Nile, looking away. She cleared her throat. “Speaking of doing worthwhile things, are we going to try and tackle the north wall before luncheon?”

They did, and throughout scrubbing mildew from the walls and windows and later going inside for a hearty luncheon of meat and vegetable pies, they all kept the conversation light, steering clear both of Nile’s aimless post-war existence and the many trials and travails of Lady Andromache. After lunch, Booker went back to his battle against the weeds while Nile tagged along with Nicky and Joe back to the library.

They retrieved a stack of old ledger books for Joe to work on at the desk in the corner, and Nile and Nicky went back to shelving books, which made for good conversation as Nile identified a favorite novel or marveled over one of the collection’s seemingly endless one-of-a-kind treasures.

“Oh, _Lord_ ,” said Nile, picking up a book that was hundreds of years old if it was a day, bound in a plain brown leather cover but full of marvels on the inside. She thought it was a book of poetry, though she couldn’t read any of it. The left-hand pages had been written in one language, in a flowing and elegant script, while the pages on the right were written in another language, this one in the rounded lettering Nile recognized from other medieval books in the collection. Around the borders of each page were beautifully rendered swirling patterns in green and blue and gold. “This is _gorgeous,_ ” Nile breathed. “It must have cost you a fortune.”

Nicky looked over at it from the shelf next to Nile, and a small smile quirked his lips. “Joe,” he said, “she has found your gift to me from our fifth anniversary.”

At this, Joe looked up from his ledgers, his face brightening with cheer. “Oh, _that_ gift. It wasn’t the money so much as the time,” he said to Nile. “I mean, it wasn’t cheap, but _planning_ it, that was the real labor of love.”

Nile whistled. “That’s an amazing gift.”

“I certainly thought so,” said Nicky, giving his husband a warm look.

“Hey,” said Joe, “you want amazing, his gift to me is probably sitting under it on the pile. We usually shelve them together.”

The next book in the pile was a smaller book, also in a plain brown cover. This one had no illustrations, only an occasional red or blue capital letter, but it also looked to be a translation like the other book, this one in alternating lines of one language and then another. It wasn’t as fancy, but it was carefully made and clearly written, and as an anniversary gift, Nile certainly wouldn’t have turned it down.

“I’m envious,” she informed them. “I’ve never been in a hurry to be married, but if I was married to someone who gave me fancy old books for an anniversary gift, I think I’d be all right with that.” She handed Nicky the plainer book so he could place it next to Joe’s gift to him on the shelf. “Were you married when you started working for Lady Andromache and Lady Quỳnh?”

“Oh, yes,” said Nicky, sharing one of those intimate little smiles with Joe. “We’d been married for quite a long time by then.”

Nile raised an eyebrow at that. “Quite a long time? How long are we talking about? You don’t seem old enough to have been married for _that_ long.” They’d been working for Lady Quỳnh and Lady Andromache for at least _some_ time before Lady Quỳnh died, and she seemed to have died years earlier. She supposed it was possible that Nicky and Joe were older than they looked, but they only _looked_ to be a handful of years older than her, ten or so at most. Maybe they’d been childhood sweethearts or something.

“Well, I’d say it only _seemed_ like a long time,” said Joe, “but honestly, even now it doesn’t seem like a long time. Certainly not long _enough_. I think once you’ve found the kind of love that makes everything else in your life better, that makes the world that much brighter and more beautiful, the kind I have with my Nicolò, an eternity wouldn’t be enough.”

A dark red flush crept up Nicky’s neck to his face, and he said, “Ah, it’s been a long time since you made me flush in front of strangers, you sweet-talker.” To Nile, he added, “I beg your pardon, I did not mean to refer to you as a stranger, Nile. I would say that relatively speaking, Yusuf and I had not truly been together so long when we met Andromache and Quỳnh—it was quite near the beginning of our marriage, really, I misspoke. It’s only that to me it felt like the time I had spent with him was the most important in my life. Before, my world had been small, and I had never really imagined a life outside the rigid ways I had been taught. I feel I did not truly begin to live before he and I met. That was all I meant.”

Nile whistled. “And you say _he_ ’s the sweet-talker?”

Joe laughed. “She’s got you there, my darling.”

Nile smiled at him, but then her eye was caught by something she hadn’t noticed before—a portrait hanging over the desk where he was working, partially hidden by the angle of a jutting bookshelf. She handed the book she’d been holding to Nicky for shelving and then stood to get a better look at the painting.

It was Lady Andromache and another woman, a woman with long, straight black hair and laughing dark eyes. She was dressed in a striking red silk dress and holding a bow—an archery bow. This, Nile realized, must have been Lady Quỳnh. She didn’t know when the portrait had been painted, but Lady Andromache looked to be about the same age in it that she had been at breakfast that morning. The lightness in her expression, though, that was something Nile had never seen before—the bright smile, the cheerful eyes, the affectionate curve of her hand over the other woman’s shoulder. In her other hand, she held an axe.

“Is this Lady Andromache and Lady Quỳnh?” Nile asked. Her voice sounded thin and strange to her own ears. She didn’t need Joe or Nicky to answer, really. The love radiating from the picture was answer enough.

“Yes, it is,” Joe said. “I painted that soon after we settled here.”

Nile looked away from the painting for a moment. “ _You_ painted it?” She’d assumed they’d hired a professional painter to sit for—it certainly looked as fine a painting as any she’d seen in the galleries in the city or the handful she’d managed to visit with her shipmates on the Continent.

“I did,” said Joe.

“It’s really good!”

He acknowledged her praise with a smile and a bow of the head. “Thank you. It was quite an enjoyable portrait to paint—they wanted to scandalize the neighbors, hence the insistence on posing with their weapons.”

 _Their_ weapons? They fought with an axe and a bow and arrow? Strange hobbies for noblewomen—Nile knew that Lady Andromache had been in military service at some point, but no branch of the military that Nile knew of fought with _axes_ anymore, if they ever had. She studied the painting again, seeking out more details. It seemed as if it had been painted in the music room Joe had shown her yesterday—she could see Lady Quỳnh’s pianoforte in the background between them. Now that she was looking, she could see that the women were subtly angled toward each other rather than facing directly forward. They had no wedding rings on, but both women were wearing identical necklaces, glittering pendants shaped like longish rectangles.

Nile frowned and drew closer. Something about the necklaces looked familiar to her, though she couldn’t quite put her finger on it—she certainly hadn’t seen Lady Andromache wear any such jewelry before.

Her reveries were interrupted by a loud _crack_ that made her jump in startlement, immediately curling her head and shoulders down as if to protect them from whatever had made the noise. When she looked up, though, nothing and no one in the room was moving. Instead, Nicky and Joe were staring at the long crack that had appeared in the middle of one of the panes of glass they had installed yesterday. Even as they watched, the crack split into branches, sending its white spidery arms across the glass.

“What the—” Nile said to no one in particular. It wasn’t as if anyone had thrown something at the window. None of the three of them in the room were close enough to have jostled it, and it didn’t seem as if a bird had flown into it. The glass itself must have been defective, she decided. _Very_ defective, she amended, wincing as it broke itself into shards and fell onto the new floorboards.

She looked to Nicky to see what he wanted to do, if they had a back-up pane of glass somewhere. He was staring at the window with that intensity she remembered from her first night at Scythian Woods, and as his lip curled up into a snarl, she realized with a start that he was genuinely angry. She wouldn’t have been able to picture such a thing before this moment, he was generally so calm, but there was nothing calm about the rage in his eyes as he stared at the glass. “I fixed this _yesterday_ ,” he said tightly. “I knew it would not last long, but one _day_? This house could not give me _one day_?”

Joe lay a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “We’ll fix it,” he promised. “We always fix it, don’t we?” In his eyes was a kind of hollow, sad resignation, as foreign to Nile as Nicky’s anger.

Nicky let out a shuddering breath, the anger seeming to drain out of him, and he lowered his face to Joe’s hand on his shoulder, pressing a kiss on it and reaching to cover it with his own hand. “Yes, of course, my love,” he said. “We always fix it.” He reached up to rub at one eye, and said, “I suppose we’ll need to go into town in a day or two anyway for more groceries—we’ll just need to pick up some more glass then.”

He looked so tired, and Joe so sad, that Nile felt her own heart hurt in sympathy. This place frustrated _her_ , and she’d only been there a couple of days—how much worse must it have been for people who remembered happier days there and who loved it? “I’ll help,” said Nile, lowering herself carefully to the floor by the window. “Where’s the broom?”

“I’ll get it,” said Nicky with a sigh, heading over to the shrinking pile of books by the doorway where they’d left the broom the previous day.

Nile wasn’t actually sure they’d need the broom—the pane of glass had cracked into a handful of large shards without producing any smaller pieces. She cautiously picked up one of the bigger bits and scanned the floor to see if it had been covering any tiny shards that might come back to bite them later.

“Ah, be careful,” said Joe. “Don’t cut yourself.”

“Thanks, Joe, I got it.” The floor seemed clean of smaller pieces—only five irregularly shaped shards lay sparkling in the colorless sunlight of the cloudy afternoon, plus the fragment in Nile’s hand. The edges looked clean, as if they were puzzle pieces only waiting to be put together.

Nile frowned at them. In school when she’d learned about gravity and friction and momentum, there had been a few weeks where she’d felt like she could see those forces at work in the world around her, like arrows on a diagram—simply knowing that they were there had made everyday, random things seem connected in a way they hadn’t before. It felt a little like that now, staring at these pieces of glass. Nile felt she could see exactly where the crack had begun in the glass, and how the pieces had fit together before something had forced them apart. Like those invisible arrows she’d imagined as a girl, she could see how the pieces would move if they were reunited into one pane of glass again.

Perhaps…

She felt foolish, but as she carefully fitted the shard in her hand back into the groove in the window frame it had come from, it seemed secure, and she reached down for the next piece. One by one, she replaced the broken pieces in the window frame. It was fiddly work, but not especially complicated, and like when doing a jigsaw puzzle, each piece felt _right_ as it was put back in place. When she’d set the last piece between its fellows, she took a step back and gazed at it.

It looked…good, actually. Very good. The fractures where the glass had cracked were scarcely even visible; if someone had walked into the room at that moment and not known that the window had been broken, they probably wouldn’t have seen it at all.

“Well, isn’t that something.”

Joe’s voice shook Nile out of her focus, and it felt like she was waking up from a dream. She shook herself, feeling suddenly tired. “Sorry,” she said, “I know that doesn’t actually fix it, but at least it gets the glass off the floor until you can buy a replacement window pane, right?”

When she looked over her shoulder, both Joe and Nicky were staring at the window in fascination, but their eyes snapped to her at her question. “Of course,” Nicky said, his eyes darting once, quickly, between Nile and the glass. “It will certainly do for now. Thank you, Nile.”

***

As was the usual custom at Scythian Woods, supper that evening was early, the sunlight on the horizon still yellow rather than red as the five members of the household sat down to a hearty meal of roasted chicken and vegetables. Nile found she didn’t mind—she was ravenously hungry. She imagined that all the physical work was the culprit there, as she’d been similarly excited about even the most uninspiring of meals in the navy. Still, after months of struggling to finish even her favorite of her mother’s home-cooked meals, it felt good to have an appetite.

Nicky, who seemingly took her hunger for his cooking as a compliment, smiled at her and said, “What do you say, Nile, would you like a dessert that will give you the energy to stay up and read your magic book tonight or something that will make you sleep well?”

She wiped her mouth with her napkin and considered the question. Nicky seemed to be a big believer in the medicinal properties of food. “Sleep well? It’s been a tiring day.”

“Of course,” said Nicky. “Coming right up.”

“She _has_ had a tiring day,” said Joe to Booker and Lady Andromache. They’d been largely quiet throughout dinner, with Booker having little to report besides his endless gripes about the weeds and whatever the insects were that were eating his tomato plants, and Lady Andromache taciturn as ever about how she’d spent her day. But Joe and Nicky seemed to have recovered their good spirits after their miserable reaction to the glass earlier that day, and Joe seemed practically excited to tell the others about how Nile had put the window back together.

She looked at her plate as Joe finished the story, mildly embarrassed. “It wasn’t like I actually fixed the window,” she said. “I mean, you’ll still need to replace the glass—it’s only a temporary fix to get the glass out of the way.”

Booker shot Nile a curious glance, and then asked Joe, “A temporary fix the way _I_ do temporary fixes?”

Joe shook his head, and Nile asked, “Are you usually the one fixing windows around here?” If so, it seemed strange that he hadn’t helped Nicky the previous day.

“Not really,” said Booker. “Like I said, only temporary things to hold us over until we can get replacements.”

“In that case,” said Nile, “I guess I _did_ fix it your way.”

There was an odd tension in the air, as if everyone was waiting for something. Nile supposed it could probably be attributed to the general strangeness of this household—the way that everyone, including her, hung on Lady Andromache’s reactions. Reactions that were generally sullen grunts and hurried exits from the room, thought Nile uncharitably.

But not this time. A ray of light from the setting sun cast the lady’s face in sharp relief as she lifted a glass of dark red wine to her lips. “Interesting,” she said evenly. She sipped her wine and then said, “Madame Moreau’s daughter is back from the city.”

As much of a non-sequitur as this was, it was the first time that Lady Andromache had said something so casually while looking Nile in the eye the whole time. She felt unaccountably warm at the woman’s level regard.

“Celeste?” asked Booker, darting a quick look at Nile.

“Mm-hmm. Back from school at last. I had a long talk with her and her mother, and she says she’s willing to act as a teacher in the Riverside grammar school until we can find a replacement.”

Joe straightened, teeth showing white against his dark beard as he grinned widely. “That’s wonderful news!”

Lady Andromache shrugged. “Her actual schooling was as a nurse, but God knows she’s more qualified than Mrs. MacGregor.” To Nile, she asked, “Mrs. MacGregor’s a good woman, don’t get me wrong, but that’s in fact her only qualification to teach children how to read. Our actual school teacher left last year—apparently he had some good prospects in the next town over, whatever that means—and it’s been a horror show trying to replace him.”

“Well,” said Nile, slightly caught off-guard by suddenly having Lady Andromache’s attention, “I’m glad to hear that Celeste Moreau is willing to help, then.”

The conversation didn’t progress much further than that before Lady Andromache was excusing herself once more—truly, the woman took “early to bed, early to rise” as seriously as any navy lieutenant—but Nile felt very satisfied actually having had a conversation about the issues facing the estate’s tenants with her employer for once. She played a few rounds of cards with Joe, Nicky, and Booker, and went to bed feeling exhausted but happy.

She fell asleep quickly enough, but something awoke her while it was still dark out. She lay still and listened. Sound traveled strangely in the house at night, she thought; sometimes it seemed like noise from down the hall or the floor below was happening right in her room. Tonight it was a low murmuring of voices. She didn’t know what time it was, but it seemed that Nicky and Booker hadn’t been lying about their strange sleep habits; she imagined that the three men might well still be downstairs playing cards, and she wondered how on earth with all the hard work they put in they didn’t absolutely collapse into bed at night.

Sighing, she stood to fetch herself a cup of water from the pitcher by the washstand. Though the spring was cool here, her room was stuffy and a little humid, and a bit of a drink and a little cool water on her face felt lovely. Though the night was as overcast as the day had been, leaving the room dark as Tartarus in the middle of the night, as Nile stood there and sipped, a cloud moved across the moon and away, leaving a silvery trail of light flooding into her room.

Something was moving outside.

Frowning, Nile stepped over to the window. Her room overlooked the east side of the house; if she craned her neck to one side, she could see the horse stables and Booker’s kitchen garden edging out from behind. That was about all her view typically revealed, however; if she looked straight ahead, there was nothing but desolate gray moorland reaching out to the horizon.

Except tonight, a white shape was drifting across the moors. Despite the dark, Nile thought she could see the waving edges of hair, the flutter of a dress in the shape’s slow progress against the dark earth.

She backed slowly away from the window, a chill rising up her spine, and Elijah’s words returned to her: _I bet it’s haunted._

Nile didn’t believe in ghosts. She took a deep breath, set her cup back on the washstand, and absolutely did not hurry back to bed to draw the covers around herself again. Surely it was only the draftiness of the room making her shiver. Perhaps it wasn’t so stuffy after all.

It was a long time before she fell back asleep.


	4. Chapter 4

_Dear Elijah,_

_Before you ask, I don’t think the house is haunted! But I do think you’d find it delightfully eerie. I, of course, find it mostly a lot of work: the house is far, far too big for the staff it has to maintain it, and if Lady Andromache were sensible about it, she’d hire about three dozen more people and maybe knock down a wing or two. But she’s not sensible, she’s ‘eccentric,’ and I’ll say that Scythian Woods is certainly atmospheric. I’m sure you’d be able to write a fantastic story about it._

_Lady Andromache herself is a hard nut to crack, and not a lady who seems particularly interested in having someone handle her correspondence or read the newspaper to her, but she’s kind enough, and I find the work around the manor interesting. As I’m sure you can imagine, with a manor this large and, honestly, falling apart, there are always things to do. It’s probably futile, trying to restore this house to its former glory, but it’s certainly a nice fantasy, and I like the people I’m working with. It’s certainly a lot better than working at a teahouse at rush hour downtown, or doing inventory at the shoe shop, so I’m not complaining, never fear!_

_I hope your classes are going well. Please write and let me know if your plan to show up your awful Latin teacher by making yourself his star pupil is working out. Please also let me know if you or Mama need anything, because you and I both know she’ll never ask if she does._

_Your loving sister,_

_Nile_

Regardless of what she’d told her brother, Nile was just about at the end of her rope with Lady Andromache. She’d thought that the night Celeste Moreau had agreed to be the new grammar school teacher would be a turning point, that the lady was beginning to trust Nile and would soon let her accompany her on her tours around the estate to help the tenants. She’d been dead wrong. It had been over a week now, and though Lady Andromache seemed increasingly willing to include Nile in conversation, every morning she left Nile to do whatever Nicky, Joe, and Booker wanted her to do around the house.

She didn’t even know why she was so frustrated about it. After all, if her employer wanted her to help around the house, for the kind of money Lady Andromache was paying and the level of work the house needed, it was a perfectly fair request. But she was beginning to feel stifled by the dank, mildewy walls of Scythian Woods, and Lady Andromache’s daily rejections were beginning to feel a little personal.

After a morning of helping Joe sort through tax documents, Nile thought she might actually cry. She must have looked it, too, because Joe, Nicky, and Booker were giving her faintly alarmed looks over lunch.

“Look,” said Joe, “I know you’re always looking for productive things to do with your time, but why don’t you take a break this afternoon? You’ve been working hard.”

“I’m fine,” Nile said. After lunch, Booker was fixing the chicken coop, and Nicky was cleaning the bathrooms, and Joe was making a list of rooms whose ceilings needed replastering and preparing their supplies. It wasn’t like Nile would get _bored_.

Booker scoffed. “Oh, come on. It’s a halfway decent day for once, why not take a walk?”

“A walk?” asked Nile in surprise. As far as she could tell, Joe, Nicky, and Booker didn’t do a lot of pleasure walking or riding—when they left the manor, it was because they had some errand to run or something to do for the tenants. They’d taken a full day off on Sunday and so Nile had, too, but they hadn’t _gone_ anywhere. They’d just hung around reading and playing cards and taking naps on the settees in the Grand Sitting Room, which was like a cathedral and would have been ridiculously beautiful if it hadn’t been for the stains on its high arched ceilings.

“Sure, why not?” said Joe.

“It’ll be good for you to get to know the land a little better,” Nicky added. “And Booker’s right, it’s a pleasant day—some fresh air would do you good.”

“It won’t, ah….” Nile hesitated. “Wolves aren’t a problem?”

Nicky grimaced. “No. Ah, no, not during the day. And they don’t attack humans, anyway, not if they’re left alone.”

“The real danger is bogs,” Booker offered helpfully.

“Ah. Okay.” Nile turned the idea over in her mind, and the more she thought about it, the more the idea appealed. It wouldn’t do anything about Lady Andromache, but it would feel nice to get away from the house for a little, to breathe in deeply and have all that wide-open space to herself.

“I’ll pack you some snacks for the road,” said Nicky, apparently perceiving that Nile was giving in. He got up from the table and started grabbing things out of the icebox.

Joe leaned his elbows on the table and leaned forward to look Nile in the eyes. “Now, you’re gonna want to stick to the road, all right? Mist can roll down from the hills in a matter of minutes around here and make the fog just about opaque, and you _don’t_ want to wander off and sink into a bog.”

“Not if you’d like to be found in the next ten years,” Booker added.

She frowned, taken aback. “You’re not making this walk sound very attractive.”

“Sorry,” said Joe, “but we want you to be safe. Stick to the roads. No one will bother you, you won’t get lost, and bogs won’t be an issue.”

“And you’re _sure_ this isn’t like a fairy tale where the wicked stepmother sends the children into the woods to get eaten by a witch?” Nile asked playfully. If the men wanted the house to themselves for a few hours, it was no skin off Nile’s nose.

“Who is a wicked stepmother?” asked Nicky. He handed Nile a packet wrapped in cloth. “Apples,” he said, “some of the cherry pastries from breakfast, and if you get hungrier than that, I made sandwiches. Two kinds.”

Nile looked up. “Well, thanks, Nicky. You’re certainly not a wicked stepmother.”

He grinned crookedly. “I’m relieved to hear it.”

After going up to change into an ever-so-slightly-less-practical dress—it was getting a little tiresome to stick to dresses she didn’t mind getting dirt or bleach on, and after all if Nile ran into anyone on the road she wanted to look respectable—Nile set out, her knapsack holding Nicky’s package of snacks, the book she’d been reading, and a pocket knife that Booker insisted she take along. “Knife comes in handy in all kinds of situations,” he’d said. She hadn’t argued.

The weather today was nice, relatively speaking; for once, the clouds weren’t a thick cover, but little wisps rolling aimlessly across the blue sky. The breeze still had a chill to it, but the sun was warm, and it felt good to stretch her legs.

The land wasn’t what Nile would call scenic—even the grasses and moss of the moors seemed patchier than it did on postcards and engravings back in the city, with stretches of bare rock or spots like spilled ink in which the ground cover was clearly dead. Even so, there was something a little majestic about it. Rugged, maybe, was the word. It was a kind of stark, harsh beauty, pitiless and wild and a little melancholy.

It was possible, Nile considered, that her embarrassing _tendre_ for Lady Andromache was spilling over onto her appreciation for the landscape.

She had probably walked about two miles when a scream shattered the quiet murmur of the grasses and the occasional birdcall. Nile froze, remembering what the men had said about the bogs.

Another scream. It echoed against the landscape, apparently reverberating from the sky itself.

Damn the bogs, if someone was in trouble, Nile couldn’t just stand there. She headed off the road in the direction the sound seemed to be coming from, over a steep hill covered in scrubby grass with shriveled little shrubs.

The bottom of the hill left her in a little valley, and she headed up and over the other side of it to see a little farmstead. There were people in its yard clustered around something, and she jogged over to it to see if it was where the sound was coming from.

“Excuse me,” she said, “can I…help?”

She lost track of the sentence partway through, because as she approached the wooden fence, a figure lifted its head from amidst the clump of people, and Nile recognized a very distraught-looking Lady Andromache.

“Miss Freeman,” she greeted stiffly.

Nile realized now what the scream had been. A stocky, dark gray farm horse stood on three legs; its fourth hung down, badly swollen, and Nile’s gorge rose as she thought she recognized bone sticking through its skin. Its eyes rolled back in its head, wide with terror and pain. Lady Andromache stood next to it, one hand on its neck stroking soothingly, the other feeling the broken leg. Her eyes looked bleak.

“Miss Freeman,” she said again, “Mr. and Mrs. Lukyanov. You’ll have met their son, Andrei. This is their other son, Lev. And Túča.”

Nile had scarcely noticed the strangers when she first approached, but now she took them in. Mr. Lukyanov was an older man with a gray beard and mustache and long, stern features. He looked grave as he nodded at Nile, his attention still on the horse. Mrs. Lukyanov, who was tall and broad-shouldered and looked like the kind of woman who was probably the mainstay of her family, and Lev, who was about Elijah’s age with straight reddish hair, both looked near tears. A farm horse did a lot of jobs, Nile thought. It kept the farm running. Expensive to replace. Part of the family, maybe. She looked again at the horse, Túča, and swallowed a sudden lump in her throat.

“What happened?” she asked Lady Andromache.

It was Lev who answered, his voice thick with tears. “I was riding back from the village. I stuck to the road, I _did_ , but there was a pothole, and I tried to get around it, but Túča misstepped, and the ground gave way, and she….”

“Shh,” said his mother, wrapping a comforting arm around his shoulders. “You got her home and got the lady, my son. You did well.”

Nile thought of Lady Andromache telling everyone the previous week that she was going out to check the road by the Lukyanovs’ place, and wondered if this kind of thing was why, and if it happened often, and if she’d seen the pothole that caused this and not gotten around to fixing it yet.

She didn’t know what to say or how she could help. “Can you fix her leg?”

Lady Andromache pursed her lips and stroked Túča’s neck again. Her expression was tight, her eyes hooded, and she let out a slow sigh.

Oh. You didn’t have to be a mind-reader to know what that meant.

It wasn’t as if Nile had never seen a wounded horse, or seen one put out of its misery—she hadn’t seen a lot of action overseas, but during the few brief spurts of battle she had been a part of, casualties among the cavalry had been far higher for horses than for soldiers. But it seemed different here, where everything was quiet and gloomy and desperate and everyone was working so hard just to make things work. This horse’s death would be a devastating blow to the Lukyanovs, Nile could see that, and she could see just as clearly that it would weigh on Lady Andromache’s conscience painfully. She stepped closer to Lady Andromache and the horse, hoping obscurely to be some kind of comfort, to the lady or Túča or both.

For the life of her, she couldn’t quite explain what happened next.

The horse’s sides were heaving, gleaming with sweat, as she breathed in and out wildly, and Nile reached trembling fingers to her neck, her hand next to Lady Andromache’s. She was a well cared-for horse, Nile thought—her coat was well-groomed, and she seemed a healthy weight, and her tack was free of dust and freshly waxed and oiled to keep moisture from the leather. Túča was well-loved. It was only her leg that was the problem. Nile could imagine what she was like when she wasn’t in pain, a sturdy, even-tempered farm horse, perhaps with a taste for sugar cubes that Lev indulged.

It was only her leg that was the problem. Horses’ legs were so fragile, they had to bear so much weight. But it was such a simple thing—if only pieces of bone could be fitted back together as easily as Nile had put together those shards of glass in the window…

Mrs. Lukyanov gasped, and Nile blinked. “What…”

Lady Andromache was staring with sharp eyes at Túča’s leg, and as Nile followed her gaze, she could see why. The leg was still swollen and dirty, the knee stained with blood. But Nile could have sworn that earlier, she had seen bone jutting out from the leg. If she had, she certainly didn’t now—the skin was almost whole except for a scrape, and the leg seemed, well, leg-shaped.

Feeling carefully along Túča’s leg while never taking her wide eyes from Nile, Lady Andromache’s brows drew together and she bit her lower lip, apparently concentrating hard. After a moment, she said, “I think we read this wrong.”

“What do you mean?” asked Mr. Lukyanov.

“The leg’s not broken,” said Lady Andromache. “Bad sprain. It must have looked like a break because of the blood, but there’s no fracture in the bone here.”

Hope dawned like the sun in Lev Lukyanov’s eyes. “You mean, she’ll be all right?”

“Cold water to reduce the swelling,” the lady pronounced. “In regular twenty-minute intervals for the next couple of days, until the leg’s about the size it normally is. And two or three weeks of rest. I’ll be back to check on her then. But if you’re careful, and keep her from putting too much weight on it, I don’t see why she _couldn’t_ make a full recovery.” She patted Túča’s neck briskly and said, “You got lucky, girl.” Her eyes met Nile’s again, and though she’d started to smile, her eyes were serious as she said, “I think we all did.”

After fielding the tearful thanks of the Lukyanovs and demonstrating the cold water therapy on Túča’s leg, Lady Andromache gestured with her head to the road beyond the Lukyanovs’ farmstead. “Shall we?” she said. “Nicky will have my head if we’re not back in time for supper.”

They bid farewell to the family, who were wrapped up in pampering the bewildered-looking Túča, and set off back toward the manor house. Lady Andromache had ridden her own horse, a tall, handsome mare named Luna with black hair and long legs, but now she walked alongside Nile leading Luna by the reins, claiming that the horse needed the rest after her frantic ride out to the Lukyanovs’ when Lev had fetched her.

Nile was glad that Lady Andromache was beside her—her limbs felt strangely heavy, probably a result of her tension over Túča’s fate and its sudden release when Lady Andromache had revised the horse’s prognosis, and having someone walking next to her gave her something to focus on other than her own exhaustion. They didn’t talk, but it felt companionable.

“You handled yourself well there,” said Lady Andromache after a few minutes, breaking the silence.

Nile didn’t feel she’d done much of anything except stand around and hold things when Lady Andromache told her to hold them, but she said, “Thanks.”

“Túča isn’t their only horse,” Lady Andromache went on, “but Andrei uses the other two most of the time for drawing the cart, and Túča does most of the farm work. It means a lot to them that we were able to save her.” She patted Luna’s neck as if reassuring herself that her own horse was safe and well.

“I don’t know that we really did much,” Nile said. “If she really had broken her leg, I don’t know what we could have done, but I’m glad it turned out to be a sprain.”

“Right,” said the lady slowly, giving Nile a look like she was trying to peer inside her head. “A stroke of luck, indeed.” After another brief spell of silence, she said, “I’m sorry I’ve been such a terrible employer since you arrived.”

Nile felt her face warm. “Oh, you’re fine,” she said. “I’ve _had_ terrible employers, and I’m pleased to say you don’t make the list.” It was true enough as far as such things went; her first job had been on school holidays when she was a girl, selling newspapers, and her supervisor there had had a tendency to steal her papers to sell them for himself. One of the endless series of jobs she’d had after the navy was with a solicitor’s office doing filing, and the solicitor there had been a mean-spirited man who took his frustrations out on everyone around him. Compared to that, Lady Andromache’s eccentric absenteeism barely even registered.

Lady Andromache huffed out a laugh. “Well, shall we say an _elusive_ employer, then? I haven’t exactly been an easy lady to be a lady’s companion to.”

“That’s true,” Nile acknowledged. “I guess I can’t blame you, though. It kind of seems as if Nicky, Joe, and Booker hired me against your wishes.”

She shook her head. “No, not that, exactly,” she said, but apparently that was as far as she was going to explain _that_.

The companionable silence turned tense, or perhaps it was only Nile’s imagination. She felt very aware of Lady Andromache beside her, as if her skin could perceive the woman’s presence without touch, a phantom sensation of nearness. “Okay,” said Nile, not sure what else _to_ say.

Lady Andromache looked up at the sky and slowed her stride. Nile followed her gaze to see a raven circling overhead. To her shock, the bird swooped down and perched on Lady Andromache’s shoulder.

“My God,” she exclaimed, startled, but Lady Andromache only smiled warmly. Even Luna, who pranced a bit nervously when the raven landed, calmed after a moment, huffing in the raven’s face companionably. The raven accepted this with a quiet noise like a chuckle.

“I’m sure Booker’s told you that ravens recognize their friends,” Lady Andromache said. “He’s a font of useless trivia, but in this case it happens to be true.” She dug a piece of bread out of her pocket and fed it to the raven, who gulped it down with a cheerful-sounding _quork_.

Her mood apparently lightened by the presence of the bird, Andromache turned back to Nile. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Honestly. I’ve been very rude since you came to Scythian Woods, and I know it’s put a lot of pressure on you and Joe, Nicky, and Booker. I think I’ve fallen into very poor habits, and I’ve been putting up a fight about being knocked out of them.”

Nile thought about all the time she’d spent at home dragging herself out of bed and sitting in sullen silence at her mother’s table, knowing she was being ungrateful but unable to articulate what was wrong and how she or anyone else could fix it. How many times had her mother encouraged her to try a new job or apply to university, only for Nile to throw out her incomplete application letter or leave yet another job after a week? And Nile had nothing like Lady Andromache’s excuses for wanting to be alone and lick her wounds. “I know how that goes,” she said.

“I imagine you do.” Lady Andromache sighed. “They were right, you know. We really are lucky to have you at Scythian Woods.”

Nile refused to let herself feel _too_ flattered by this sudden regard. After all, the warmth pooling in her stomach probably had as much to do with the sharp curve of Lady Andromache’s cheekbones and the way her grayish eyes looked bluer under the day’s sunny skies than it did with any merits on Nile’s part being acknowledged. “Well, I’m glad you think so,” she said. “Can I ask…if you really put up such a fight at the idea of having a lady’s companion, why let them hire me in the first place?”

“That _is_ the question, isn’t it,” said Lady Andromache pensively. The raven stuck its beak in her hair, and Nile winced, but it didn’t seem to be hurting her. It was grooming her, maybe, the way it might arrange a fellow bird’s feathers.

“You don’t have to answer, of course,” she said. “Honestly, my lady, I don’t really have any grounds to complain about the job. The pay is more than generous, and I get along well with everybody.”

“So they’ve told me.” She twisted her mouth into a frustrated grimace before smoothing it out again into a self-deprecating shrug of a smile. “Frankly, I think hiring you was the best thing I’ve done for Joe, Nicky, and Booker in years. They put up with a lot from me. Ever since…well, for a long time, now I don’t feel like myself very often anymore, I feel like some wild thing that doesn’t know how to be around people. I meant what I said, I feel fortunate to have you here, but I also feel lucky that they didn’t leave years ago. I’m very difficult to make happy, you know. When they fuss over me, I feel trapped, but as soon as I’ve pushed them away, I feel desperately lonely. It’s a vicious cycle.” She shot Nile a slantways glance. “Don’t tell them I said that, by the way. I’m sure they know, but I’d rather not have another conversation about this sentimental business with them. It hurts them more than it helps me.”

Nile couldn’t help herself—she reached out to squeeze Lady Andromache’s free hand. “Your feelings are safe with me,” she said. “I know _exactly_ what you mean. It was the same way with my family when I came back from the war.” She let go of the other woman’s hand, hoping she hadn’t been too bold.

The hand that Nile had squeezed flexed, and Lady Andromache looked at it for a moment before fixing Nile with a sad smile. “It’s a hard thing,” she said. “To be changed by life, and to realize that you don’t fit in the places that used to be home to you.”

“It is,” Nile agreed, and the raven made an affirmative squawk.

It startled both women into a laugh, breaking the tension of the moment, and Nile took a deep breath. “Where did you fight?” she asked. “Nicky and Copley mentioned that you and Lady Quỳnh were soldiers, and I wondered….”

“What did you wonder?” asked Lady Andromache, her laughter fading but her expression still lighter than it had been.

“Is that how you and Lady Quỳnh met? And the others? Booker said that he was a soldier when he met you, and he and Nicky and Joe certainly don’t act like your servants, or not like any servants I’ve ever heard of. I just wondered if you’d met in the military, and if so, where, because you don’t seem to be from the same places at all.”

Lady Andromache whistled. “That’s really a lot of questions, isn’t it?”

“I suppose,” said Nile sheepishly.

“Well, the answer to them is quite a big story,” the lady said. “And not one I’m inclined to tell you today. But suffice it to say that yes, Quỳnh and I were warriors when we met. And afterwards. Quỳnh was an absolute pit viper in a fight—watching her in action was one of the purest pleasures of my life. And Joe, Nicky, and Booker have been many things to us over the years, including soldiers.”

Nile could imagine it. Of course Lady Andromache would be drawn to a woman she described fondly as a pit viper. She pictured them as legendary queens from a storybook, gathering a coterie of loyal knights around them.

She didn’t know whether the wistfulness that welled up in her was at the idea that she would never see them together and be counted among their knights, or at the fact that such a perfect match between warrior ladies, such a profound grief that had rewritten Lady Andromache’s life, didn’t exactly leave much room for some new girl with a crush.

“At any rate,” said Lady Andromache, clearing her throat, “I’m determined to be a better employer from here on out. I hope you’re ready for the lady’s companion job of your life.”

Nile grinned at the playful challenge in her voice. “Ready whenever you are,” she said.

The sun was hovering low on the horizon and the shadows were long in the early evening by the time that they walked up the gravel drive to the house. Outside, Joe was pacing, while Nicky and Booker stood leaning against the walls. Nile thought of their warnings about the bogginess of the ground and hoped that they hadn’t been too worried.

“Well!” said Joe as soon as he saw them, striding up to them. “I was beginning to wonder if you were coming back at all tonight!”

As if startled by Joe’s approach, the raven, which had moved from Lady Andromache’s shoulder to Luna’s saddle, glided off into the trees, and Lady Andromache gave Joe a sour look. “We got caught up in something,” she said briskly. “The Lukyanovs’ horse was hurt. Tell you about it later. Nile says you’re not very good servants, by the way. Not subservient enough, I guess.”

“Hey!” Nile objected. “I didn’t say that!”

Booker snorted. “Good luck replacing us,” he said, taking a swig from a flask in his pocket.

“Here, Lady Andromache,” said Nicky, who walked up behind his husband and handed Lady Andromache a packet. “Have a subservient offering. You missed luncheon.”

Lady Andromache took the packet and held it to her nose, inhaling deeply. “Oh, thanks, Nicky, I’m starving.” She ripped off the waxed cloth to reveal a sandwich. Handing Booker Luna’s reins, she began taking bites of her sandwich as she strode off into the house.

“Wait, what?” asked Nile, scrambling after her. Inside the entryway, the setting sun reflected golden red off the dull wooden floors. The landing of the upper floor, visible from the doorway, was already shrouded in gloom. Lady Andromache swept up the stairs, though, like she didn’t even notice the darkness. “Are you not eating supper?” Surely, she thought, Lady Andromache couldn’t be changing for supper—she never had before, not since Nile had been there.

“No,” Lady Andromache called back down, her mouth full of sandwich. “Don’t have time. See you tomorrow, though!” With that, she vanished around a corner, down the corridor where the bedrooms were.

Nile paused at the bottom of the stairs, baffled, then went outside again to the stables, where Booker was brushing down Luna and Joe and Nicky were filling her manger with fresh feed and water. “I don’t understand,” she said. “She’s really just…going to bed?”

“What’s to understand?” asked Booker with a shrug. “She keeps early hours—you already knew that.”

“I did,” said Nile, “but I didn’t know she kept to them so strictly she’d just inhale a sandwich rather than sit down to supper. It’s not even dark out yet!”

“You get used to the odd hours,” said Joe. He gave Luna a friendly, familiar pat on the nose and gestured to Booker and Nicky to follow. “Now come on, tell us all about what happened with you and Lady Andromache and Túča’s leg!” He put a companionable hand on Nile’s shoulder to herd her through the garden toward the outer door to the kitchen.

“Wait, how’d you know it was Túča’s leg?”

“Happens all the time around here, what with the poor condition of the roads and the boggy ground,” said Joe. “And Andrei’s running errands in the city today. Process of deduction.”

“You all really have your thumb on the pulse of everything around here, don’t you?” asked Nile as they reached the kitchen.

Nicky, who had clearly already set out his shepherd’s pie long before Nile and Lady Andromache had returned, carved a slice of it for her and said, “It’s not a big community, Nile. There’s not a lot of ‘everything’ to keep track of.”

Nile found she was starving, and so there wasn’t much talking while they all dug into the pie. She kind of wanted to go to sleep and hibernate for a month like a bear afterward, but the men still wanted to hear about what had happened with the horse, so Nile told them. They listened quietly while she recalled the events of the afternoon and exchanged serious looks when she was done.

“That was, ah. Lucky,” Booker said. “That it turned out to be a sprain rather than a break.”

“That’s what Lady Andromache said, too.”

Joe leaned forward toward Nile. “And you were touching the horse when it happened?”

“I was,” Nile agreed. “Why?”

He leaned back again. “No reason, I suppose.”

“It’s good that you both were there,” said Nicky. “You look exhausted, though. Would you like some tea with honey to help you sleep?”

“No, thank you, Nicky,” said Nile. “I think I’ll probably fall asleep without any help tonight.” Just the thought of her bed made her yawn.

She felt the slightest prickle of nerves as she put on her nightdress and pulled back the covers of her bed. The ghost woman, or the weird neighbor, or the dream, or whatever she’d seen that strange night, hadn’t made a reappearance since, but she had the strangest feeling sometimes that she would turn the corner and she’d see the figure in white floating across her floor, approaching her in bed, to….

Well, whatever ghosts did. Despite her exhaustion, she feared she wouldn’t be able to sleep with such fancies flitting about her head, but what she’d told Nicky had been right—no sooner had she lay her head on the pillow than she sank into a comforting darkness.

_“She’s clearly figuring out how it works, since she’s done it twice now,” Booker said. “But she still doesn’t know what it is.”_

_“It’s an interesting gift, to be sure,” said a woman’s voice. There was something vaguely familiar about it, but Nile couldn’t place it. “I wonder what its limits are.”_

_“I don’t like not telling her.” That was Joe._

_“Me neither.” Nicky, of course, agreeing with Joe. “She is going through something she has no frame of reference to understand. We are the only ones who can help her.”_

_The strange woman sighed. “My wife is still being stubborn about it, eh? You know what it is she fears, my sweet brothers.”_

_“We know,” said Joe. “But how much longer can we keep this secret?”_

Nile blinked her eyes open in the dark of her bedroom and squinted at the window. Judging from the total darkness outside, it wasn’t even close to morning yet, and she groaned and pulled the blankets up to her chin. What had woken her up, anyway? If the men had been talking downstairs, she couldn’t hear them now. Instantly forgetting whatever impressions her dozing half-dream had made on her, she rolled over and went back to sleep.

When she woke again, it was to golden morning sunlight spilling over her window sill, making the luxurious silk rug on Nile’s floor glow with vibrant colors, and the clang of metal striking against metal. She went out of bed to the window, and gasped aloud at what she saw: Lady Andromache, dressed in trousers and a narrowly fitted jacket, _sword fighting_ with Joe, who was dressed in the sort of clothes he used to clean the gutters. Lady Andromache was grinning so broadly her smile could be seen from Nile’s window. Nile would have thought she was hallucinating, but wasn’t sure that even in a hallucination she would have imagined Lady Andromache launching a vicious series of swipes at Joe that culminated in her using her sword to flip his own curved blade into her own hand, handle-first.

“Ha!” Nile could hear her triumphant laugh, and she rushed to put on some clothing she could move in, hurrying through her toilette in hopes of getting down their before the household had finished this strange exercise.

By the time she got down to the yard, Lady Andromache had moved on to fighting with Nicky, whose weapon of choice seemed to be a longsword so big that it took two hands to lift. It didn’t seem to give him much trouble, though, and he was meeting Lady Andromache’s blows with the same calm he did everything.

“Good morning, Nile!” Joe greeted cheerfully, apparently none the worse for his earlier defeat. “Lady Andromache’s taking the time to put us through our paces this morning.”

“Blech,” said Booker groggily. “Who uses swords this early in the morning?”

Nile couldn’t help but gawk at them. “This is new,” she said. “Since when do we spend the mornings fencing?”

“Since it occurred to me that my troops here were getting soft.” Lady Andromache had at some point slipped within Nicky’s defenses and was holding the tip of her thin, sharp blade to his neck. Nicky looked more resigned than alarmed by this and surrendered with a small smile.

“Getting slow, Nicky!” Lady Andromache crowed, and Nicky shrugged. She pulled her sword from his neck and he walked over to stand next to Joe, stretching out his arms.

“Nile,” he greeted. “Did you sleep well?”

“Well enough until I got woken up by the _tournament_ you all were having. You all do this often?”

“Often as we need to!” said Lady Andromache, who didn’t even seem out of breath after at least two swordfighting victories. “Who’s next?”

Booker groaned. “Not me,” he said.

“Miss Freeman!”

“Um…” said Nile. “I should say, I learned _how_ to fight with swords in the navy, but it wasn’t really the main focus of our training. If you need someone to shoot a rifle or operate a ship-borne cannon, I’m your woman.”

“Oh, come on,” said Lady Andromache, her smile teasing. “Surely you’re not afraid to take on an old woman like me? Joe and Nicky even softened me up for you!”

Nicky laughed at that, snorting a little, and Joe squinted at Lady Andromache. “Yes,” he said slowly. “You seem really softened up.”

“It’ll be fun,” she insisted. “Miss Freeman, what kind of sword did you train with in the navy?”

“A Marine sabre,” Nile said. “I don’t know if you’re familiar with them—three-foot blade, slightly curved, single-edged?”

The lady grinned, a little impishly. “Am I familiar with them, she asks. Booker,” she said, raising her voice. “Hand Miss Freeman your sabre.”

“Better you than me,” said Booker, and handed over his sword.

It was a little larger and heavier than the one Nile had trained with, but it was certainly more familiar to her than either Nicky’s heavy longsword or Joe’s wide curved scimitar. She lifted it carefully, testing its balance and how it felt in her hand.

“What do you think?” asked Lady Andromache. “We can get you another sword you like better, but will it do for this morning?”

This was the strangest damn thing in the world, thought Nile. One day, her employer wasn’t even talking to her, then they bonded over a wounded horse, and the next thing she knew, the woman was offering to buy her a sword and challenging her to a duel. Nile should have refused—she should have said that if Lady Andromache had been serious about being a better employer, this was an odd way to start. But instead she tightened her hand on the sword’s grip in anticipation, a familiar rush of eagerness flooding her senses with alertness and energy. “Yes,” she said, “it’ll do.”

They stood to face each other, and Nile shifted from foot to foot in search of the balanced stance she needed to hold her ground. Lady Andromache watched her patiently. “Looks good,” she said. “Bend your legs a little.”

Nile obeyed. “Do I get to give you pointers, as well?”

She smiled, showing her teeth. “If you think you can. Are you ready?”

Nile took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “I’m ready.” _Ready as I’ll ever be._

Lady Andromache leapt into action, apparently not the type to feel her opponent out slowly, forcing Nile back with a series of quick, hard attacks. Nile parried, her arms protesting at the jolt from the lady’s blows and the unfamiliar motions, and stepped back, trying to give herself a bit more space to move and relieve the pressure from Lady Andromache’s sword.

The other woman followed, though, executing a twisting lunge that almost knocked the sabre from Nile’s hands. She readjusted her grip and attempted a riposte, sliding her sword in under Lady Andromache’s guard in a low inside attack.

Lady Andromache knocked the blow aside easily, but she also stepped back, and Nile moved her sword back into a defensive position. She scanned the lady’s position, looking for an opening, and then swung at Lady Andromache from the outside.

This blow, like the other, was easily dodged, but Lady Andromache’s eyes were alight and focused squarely on Nile, her smile excited, and to Nile it was like they were the only two people in the world. Everything had narrowed to her and Lady Andromache, circling each other like a dance, like celestial bodies locked in each others’ orbits.

Nile gave the attack one more try. Lady Andromache was a clever fighter, but perhaps she wouldn’t expect Nile to try anything tricky yet. Nile feinted a lunge in her direction, waited for her to move her sword to block it, and then swung her sword around, shifting her grip to try for an underhanded jab toward the lady’s chest. If she could catch her off-guard for just a moment—

Lady Andromache stepped quickly to one side and swung her sword up to meet Nile’s, the unexpected force of the attack driving her sword from her hands. The heavy sabre fell to the earth with a clatter, and the point of the lady’s sword was at Nile’s throat.

“You yield?” she asked.

Good sense would have had Nile yielding immediately, but her blood was up, so instead she leaned away from the swordpoint and forward and tried to reach around Lady Andromache’s ankle with her foot, hoping to trip her. The lady was caught off-balance for a split second, and Nile moved to hurl her weight at the woman, but Lady Andromache moved with the blow and rolled them both into the dirt so that they ended with Nile flat on her back and Lady Andromache on top, her knees on either side of Nile’s hips.

“You’re a tricky one, huh?” she asked. Her chest was moving quickly now with her breaths, and just the faintest sheen of perspiration made her chest, visible in a V between the lapels of her jacket and the unbuttoned top fastening of her shirt underneath, glow faintly in the soft morning light. “You yield now?”

Nile groaned. She was used to having her clothes get dirty at Scythian Woods, but not usually this early in the morning. She was going to be a mess. “I yield,” she said.

In an instant Lady Andromache had hopped up from her perch atop Nile and was offering her a hand up. “Good fight,” she offered.

“Not really,” Nile grumbled. “You had me beat in, what, a minute?”

Shrugging, the lady answered, “Like you said, sword wasn’t what your training focused on. I can tell. But your instincts are good, and you know your own body, and that’s far more difficult to teach than technique. You want to go again?”

The sound of someone clearing his throat interrupted before Nile could answer. “Excuse me, Lady Andromache,” Joe said. “But didn’t you tell us you wanted to go _easy_ on Nile for a while, so that no one gets _hurt_?

The strange emphasis he was putting on his words made it sound like what he was saying was code for something else, and Nile frowned at him. She wasn’t exactly a wilting flower, and Lady Andromache had just _said_ she’d done well, so she didn’t know what Joe was getting at.

Lady Andromache flapped a hand at him. “Yes, all right, Joe, you’re right. Besides, three bouts in one morning is probably enough for me. Not for you, though, you’re all sadly out of practice. We’ll need to get back into the habit of running drills.”

“If you like,” said Nicky evenly. “I was going to make a trip into the town to run errands today—would you like me to put that off?”

“No.” Lady Andromache wrinkled her nose, and she turned to Nile. “You have anything you want him to pick up in town?”

“Just some letters to deliver,” Nile said. “And—oh, did you ever buy a new pane of glass for the library window?”

Nicky blinked at her, looking mildly confused. “The library window? Oh, yes, of course, the one that was broken. You’re right, I should get a new pane of glass for that.”

“Well…yes,” said Nile, a bit confused herself. Nicky had been so angry when the window had broken, and now he’d just forgotten about it?

“At some point we’ll need to talk to the smith about getting Miss Freeman here a sword that suits her better,” said Lady Andromache, “but we have time to talk about that. That’s not the sort of thing that should be rushed.” She rolled her shoulders. “Well! Do you have something for breakfast that Miss Freeman and I can eat on the road? And maybe luncheon as well?”

“Certainly,” Nicky said, and Nile felt herself staring at the lady.

“For you and me? On the road?”

Lady Andromache started over toward the stables, and she looked over her shoulder to gesture for Nile to follow her. “Of course—if you’re going to be my lady’s companion around here, Nile, you’ll need to know the lay of the land. Any preferences when it comes to riding horses?”

“Uh.” Nile ran after her to catch up, brushing dust from her clothing and trying to think of the last time she’d ridden a horse. She was already a little sore from her fight, and she had no doubt that being on a horse for any appreciable amount of time would make it worse, but her heart was as light as it had been in a long time.

A quarter of an hour later, Nile and Lady Andromache rode out, Lady Andromache on Luna and Nile on a reddish-brown gelding called Gringalet. Nile wasn’t a seasoned rider, but everyone had assured her that Gringalet was a gentle and responsive horse who’d be easy for her to handle, and as they rode past the unlovely cluster of trees Nile and Andrei had passed on her first night at Scythian woods, she thought that so far they were right.

“Our tenants at Scythian Woods are truly the few and the proud,” Lady Andromache told her as they rode. She rode easily, her single hand on the rein as she turned to look at Nile seemingly enough for her to guide Luna. “The land is rubbish, of course, not good for growing anything, but it’s not terrible for grazing sheep and goats, and the Chapmans at least have a thriving egg business.”

“The Chapmans,” Nile repeated. “The ones who live near the bridge, right? Do they have a stand at the Riverside market for their eggs?”

“They do,” said Lady Andromache approvingly. “You’ve been paying attention. We’re not far from there now, actually—I think we’ll begin our tour there.”

They veered off in the direction of the river, and before too long they reached the Chapmans’ farm. As it turned out, the Chapmans were a large family, with seven children and Mr. Chapman’s grandmother, who smiled and reached for Lady Andromache’s hands as soon as she approached with a greeting. Her family had been on the land for decades, Lady Andromache explained, and the old Mrs. Chapman nodded. “I’m old enough to remember when we saw Lady Quỳnh on these visits,” she said, patting Lady Andromache’s hand comfortingly. “I think she would have liked this Miss Freeman.”

Lady Andromache’s mouth pinched with sorrow, but she squeezed Mrs. Chapman’s hand gently.

“Thank you,” said Nile, wondering when it was exactly that Lady Quỳnh had died. The way Mrs. Chapman talked, it sounded like it had been decades ago, which made no sense—she supposed that the woman was simply mixing up her years, the way that Nile’s grandmother had when she’d gotten very elderly.

The Chapman children insisted on showing Nile their chicken coop, which was practically a thriving chicken metropolis in comparison to Booker’s coops at Scythian Woods. She obligingly oohed and ahhed at it while Lady Andromache talked with their parents about how the bridge was holding up and about Mademoiselle Moreau taking over at the school. When Lady Andromache called her over, she complimented Mr. and Mrs. Chapman on how clever and good the children were, and the two women bid the Chapmans farewell as they headed off to the Warren farm.

The Warrens’ establishment was quite a bit bigger than the Chapmans’, and of the two Mrs. Warrens, one of them was apparently more knowledgeable about sheep than any person Nile had ever met while the other was apparently more knowledgeable about yarn and clothmaking than any person had ever met. Both of them talked so much that even Lady Andromache could only get the occasional word in edgewise—usually raunchy jokes about their ram, who was apparently possessed of a still bigger personality than the two Mrs. Warrens. Nile cringed at these jokes, but the Mrs. Warren who was an expert in sheep laughed uproariously at every one of them, so Nile supposed that Lady Andromache knew her audience well.

As they rode on to the next farm, Lady Andromache shot Nile a sidelong look. “The Warrens take a bit of getting used to,” she said. “But they’re good women, and their rents are probably the estate’s biggest source of income.”

It had seemed a very respectable little sheep farm, but Nile was still curious. “About how much does the estate actually bring in?” she asked. “I know how much you’re paying me, and I’d imagine that Joe, Nicky, and Booker make more. Do you see a lot of personal profit from the lands here?” It occurred to her that this might perhaps be a sensitive subject, and she hurried to say, “Pardon me for my nosiness—of course you don’t have to answer that if you don’t want to, my lady.”

Lady Andromache shrugged. “It’s just money, who cares? No, I don’t make much from the estate. Honestly, it costs more than it makes, and if I hired workmen to do the repairs it would cost even more. But I have—family money, and you know how money makes more money these days, stocks and investments and things. Joe handles that end of things, so you can ask him if you’re interested.”

She would, she thought, but something else the lady had said stuck out to her. “If you don’t mind my asking, why _don’t_ you hire workmen to do the repairs? I mean, clearly Joe and Nicky and Booker are doing their best to keep the house running, but if you have the money, why not make things easier on them?”

Another shrug, this one gloomier. “Because it would be like throwing money away,” said Lady Andromache, more serious than Nile had seen her all morning. “It would all just break down again, and the workmen would get tired of fixing the same things over and over again.”

“That’s a little fatalistic,” said Nile with a frown. “By that logic, why bother ever washing dishes? They just get dirty again.”

That startled a laugh out of Andromache. “It’s not quite the same thing,” she said, “but it’s not a bad point, I’ll give you that. Suffice it to say that wouldn’t do much to get the house in better shape, but I suppose if we get to the point where local laborers need the work, I’ll get them out to the manor once or twice to do a few temporary fixes.” She gave Nile a considering look. “Why don’t we head over to the Moreau place next? I think you’ll like Celeste.”

As it turned out, Nile did like Celeste, who struck her as a very straightforward person, and Madame Moreau, who served a mean tea and pastry. The Moreau place was smaller by a good deal than the Warrens’, with only a handful of cows and chickens, but they scraped by, said Madame Moreau with a touch of pride, and Celeste had gone to university with the help of Lady Andromache.

Lady Andromache flushed a little at this and devoted herself to her pastry, which Nile was beginning to recognize as the lady’s strategy of choice when she didn’t want to talk about something. “Celeste is a smart kid,” she mumbled around her pain au chocolat. “She absolutely got herself into university, I just contributed a little cash.”

“She says this,” said Celeste in a conspiratorial tone, “as if she didn’t buy me new schoolbooks as a little girl and help send me to a bigger school in the city.”

“That Lady Andromache,” Nile said, shaking her head. “Always hiding her light under a bushel.”

“Always,” Celeste agreed with a laugh. “But she won’t let me thank her, so I think I must instead pass her kindness along when someone needs _my_ help.”

“You’re already doing that by agreeing to step up at the Riverside school,” said Lady Andromache gruffly.

Celeste shrugged. “It’s the most just thing, no? You help me with my education, I help the children of the village with theirs.”

Madame Moreau lay a hand on her daughter’s hand and beamed proudly at her.

Nile missed her own mother for a minute. And then her mind ran over something Celeste had said. “You…you said you worked as a nurse for a few years after university, right?”

“I did,” said Celeste. “At one of the new hospitals in the city. Why?”

“Just…” Nile did the math. Celeste was about her age, she thought, and the notion that she’d worked for a few years after university lined up with that. The notion that she’d known Lady Andromache since she was a little girl…did not. Nile tried to put together what she knew about Lady Andromache and Lady Quỳnh, what she knew about Joe and Nicky and Booker, and she couldn’t quite make the numbers fit together. “How old were you when you met Lady Andromache?”

Celeste’s eyes narrowed, as if she could see into Nile’s mind, and the atmosphere in the room chilled a few degrees. Lady Andromache sighed and set down her pastry, dabbing her mouth with the napkin. “It’s fine,” she said, sounding tired. “I trust everybody in this room, all right?” She turned to Nile and said, “Nile, I’m older than I look, but I’m sure you’ve already figured that out.” To Celeste, she said, “Nile is one of us, Celeste. She’s new, but she’s one of us. You understand?”

Nile scarcely had the mental wherewithal to be pleased that Lady Andromache had called her by the first name, because Celeste’s eyes were widening and she leaned back from the table to look at Nile with a look of almost _awe_ in her eyes. “Well!” she exclaimed. “ _That’s_ very interesting!” Suddenly she leaned forward again to clasp both of Nile’s hands in her own, her big dark eyes staring intensely into Nile’s. “You’ve come to the right place,” she said. “Welcome.”

“Uh…thank you?” Nile tried.

They left not long after that, Lady Andromache picking up on Nile’s discomfort and begging leave of the Moreau’s with the excuse that they needed to visit the next tenant on Nile’s breakneck tour. When they were out of earshot, Nile asked, “What was that all about? And why did Celeste act like that?”

Lady Andromache heaved a sigh. “Celeste is…protective, all right? I think to some extent a lot of the tenants are. They’ve adopted me and Joe and Nicky and Booker as the eccentrics who live off in the big crumbling ruin and occasionally provide money and new bridges.”

“And she gets specifically protective when we talk about how old you are?” Nile asked incredulously. The idea that Lady Andromache was the kind of woman who got insecure about her age was…frankly unbelievable.

“She gets protective when she thinks strangers are digging into my business,” said Lady Andromache. “I only needed her to understand that you’re not a stranger, and she does now.”

“That’s good, I suppose,” said Nile, still feeling dubious about the whole thing. “Who are we visiting next?”

“Oh, I think we’ll take a break from the tour.” Lady Andromache gestured toward the little hillock ahead of them. An old, twisted tree stood on its crest, and mossy rocks covered its sides. “That’s a nice place to sit and eat luncheon, if you’re interested.”

Nile wasn’t particularly hungry after the pastry and tea at the Moreaus, but she also wasn’t eager to run off and make small talk with another family of tenants. “I’m interested.”

They didn’t talk much while they ate. Nicky had made little spinach and cheese pies for them, and they were just messy enough to eat that they could busy themselves with napkins and their bottles of water rather than trying to fill the silence with words. It wasn’t unpleasant, though, thought Nile. The weather was mild again today, and the view of the open plains was, well, it had a kind of beauty to it. A mist of green clung to parts of it, and while she could see parts of it that seemed withered and dead, perhaps that only made the little outbursts of spring even more remarkable in their daring.

“Lady Andromache?” Nile asked when she had finished her last pie.

The lady made an inquisitive noise.

“What did you mean when you told Celeste that I was ‘one of you’?”

She was quiet for a moment, and then said, “You weren’t bad with a sword this morning, you know.”

 _Really_? Every time Nile thought she’d cracked this woman’s hard shell, another hard shell was revealed underneath. She rolled her eyes. “You don’t need to flatter me,” she said. “I know enough about sword fighting to know that I wasn’t any good.”

“The navy,” said Lady Andromache with a nod. “You mentioned. Though it doesn’t sound as if they do as much swordfighting as they did in my day.”

“In your day?” asked Nile, raising her eyebrow.

Lady Andromache shrugged. “Like I said, older than I look.” There was that mischievous grin again, which didn’t make her look very old at all.

“They did a bit more of it back in my father’s day, too,” said Nile.

She wasn’t sure she’d meant to say that, meant to bring up her father with Lady Andromache in this way, but she could hardly take the words back now.

“Was he in the navy, too?” asked Lady Andromache evenly.

“Yes,” said Nile. “He was killed in the last big war when I was a child.”

“Ah.” The word was little more than a puff of air.

“My mother didn’t want me to join the navy.” Nile didn’t know why she was saying all this. “She didn’t tell me so, she’d never tell me not to pursue a career or a dream I wanted, but I know she was afraid she’d lose me the way she lost my father. And sometimes I think she did.” Tears burned at her eyes. She blinked, but that only made them spill over her lashes, and she wiped them quickly away with a handkerchief.

Lady Andromache made a low _hmm_ sound. “You love her very much,” she said finally.

 _Of course I love her, she’s my mother_ , Nile wanted to say, but then, that wasn’t always true, was it? Jay often joked that she had joined the navy to get away from her mother, and Nile didn’t know how much of a joke those remarks had been. Dizzy loved her mother dearly, but they fought like cats and dogs on the few occasions Nile had met Dizzy’s family, and perhaps that love wouldn’t have been visible to a stranger. “My mother is my hero,” she said. “What she did for my brother and me was amazing, pushing us to be the best that we could be despite every hardship the world threw her way, and I’ll always love her.”

“I think I’d like your mother,” said Lady Andromache with a thin smile. “The way you describe her. I don’t remember my mother.”

“Oh.” Nile searched for a question to ask that wouldn’t dig up old hurts for Lady Andromache; it seemed that the woman had many. Finally, she settled on, “Was Scythian Woods her house? Your mother’s?” It would explain the desperate, complicated disdain and loyalty Lady Andromache had for the house if it had belonged to a relative she had turbulent feelings for.

Lady Andromache stood up suddenly, and Nile’s stomach dropped. Apparently they were back to Lady Andromache storming out of meals. “No,” she said shortly.

“Oh,” Nile said again, scrambling up and wiping crumbs off her trousers.

“Listen, Nile,” said Lady Andromache, and Nile savored the sound of her name on the lady’s lips. “I don’t know that I feel like making a lot more conversation today. Why don’t we skip the rest of the tour of the tenants this afternoon and just—ride?” She gestured broadly with an arm, as if to encompass the countryside. “There’s a lot of open country out there where a woman and a horse can forget about their problems and just fly free.”

“You’re not worried about the bogs?”

“The bogs can go hang,” said Lady Andromache, a gleam in her eye. “Stick with me, Miss Freeman. I’ll keep you safe.”

The way she said _Miss Freeman_ , it was as intimate as if she’d used Nile’s given name. And the idea of freedom sounded tremendously appealing. “All right,” Nile agreed. “Let’s ride.”

Luna and Gringalet came around easily to Lady Andromache’s change in plans, and Nile found that the more she rode, the more her body fell into rhythm with the horses and the more it felt like they were one centaur-like creature, trampling the ground beneath their hooves and savoring the fresh sharpness of the wind on their skin. Beside her, Lady Andromache was aglow with pleasure, and Nile understood now why she spent all her time out of doors, and why she’d been so happy to sword fight that morning—the pure pleasure of one’s body doing exactly what one wanted it to do, the perfect tempo and harmony of it, was heady, a powerful distraction from the thoughts and fears that had weighed Nile down for so long. _Freedom_ , Lady Andromache had said, and she hadn’t been wrong.

They rode past ugly little clumps of spindly trees, hillocks of grayish-purple grass swaying in the wind, little streams running busily over rocks and humming a burbling counterpart to the whistle of the breezes. Nile supposed she’d seen some of it before when Andrei had driven her to the house the first time, but in this new and jubilant mood, it all looked fresh and new, an open space where she could stretch herself.

Lady Andromache laughed beside her, and the sound made Nile think, _I could ride forever like this with her. Her and me and the horses, under the sky._

But as if some cruel god of irony had heard Nile’s thoughts, the road curved out gray and flat in the valley of the hill they’d just crested, and a farm wagon, drawn by a single horse, plodded on by. Nile watched in horror as the pleasure and freedom drained from Lady Andromache’s face. They approached the road, Luna slowing until she just…stopped.

Lady Andromache leaned over the horse’s neck, breathing hard through her nose. “ _Damn it_ ,” she cursed, sounding genuinely angry, and Nile nudged Gringalet up close to her. “Are you all right?” she asked.

“Fine,” said Lady Andromache tightly. “We have to go back.”

“Why?” asked Nile, confused. She knew Lady Andromache kept absurdly early hours, but it was only the early afternoon yet. They had enough time to keep going and still get back before the sun set.

“Because I can’t go any farther.”

With these enigmatic words, Lady Andromache wheeled Luna around and galloped in the direction of the house, her earlier delight gone. Nile didn’t know what else to do but follow her.

By the time they returned, Lady Andromache seemed to have lost some of her anger, and instead she seemed more like the taciturn lady Nile had grown used to since her arrival at Scythian Woods. Nile didn’t exactly welcome the return of that Lady Andromache, but it was better than whatever mysterious suffering had gripped her out by the road.

No one came to greet them as they rode up the drive. Nile had thought perhaps that Booker would help them take care of the horses, but instead she and Lady Andromache rode into the stables and brushed them down themselves, Nile taking her cues from the lady. “Where is everyone?” she asked.

“In the kitchen garden,” said Lady Andromache, sounding unconcerned and gesturing with her head toward the window in the stable door, which faced the garden. “Well, and Nicky’s probably still in town running errands.”

Right. She supposed she’d assumed that he’d be back by now—Riverside really wasn’t that far away—but perhaps he’d had more errands than she’d realized, or needed to go somewhere else.

Sure enough, as they left the stables, Joe waved cheerfully at them from where he was sat on a stool, book open on his lap. Booker was muttering to himself and poking at what looked like a basil plant—a particularly puny, wilting basil plant. He looked up as they approached. “Good ride?” he asked, not really paying attention to them.

“It was pretty good for a while there, Book,” Lady Andromache said. “Did the basil insult your mother again?”

“Ha!” Booker barked an unamused laugh. “Might as well have. It’s obscene how much effort I put into taking care of this plant, and look what I get for it!” He gestured at the plant’s browning leaves with a scowl.

From his stool, Joe laughed, a much more genuine one than Booker’s. “I read a book, once, that said plants can perceive when people talk to them. Not that they understand speech, but they recognize the sounds. What d’you think those plants perceive from Booker?”

“They probably hear what I want them to do, and they’re taunting me,” muttered Booker.

The ever-present raven, who was perched on the garden fence and was beginning to feel like a neighbor in its own right, made a croaking noise like a hoarse laugh.

Lady Andromache lay a hand on his shoulder. “You tell those plants who’s boss, Book.” To Nile and Joe, she said, “I’m going upstairs to wash for supper. Call me if Nicky gets home while I’m upstairs, will you?”

“Will do, my lady,” agreed Joe.

The lady gave Nile one more unreadable look before vanishing in through the kitchen door. As if it wasn’t interested in hanging around when Lady Andromache was gone, the raven croaked and launched itself into the sky, wheeling around a few times before disappearing.

Nile sighed and sat down on the ground next to Joe. He gave her a warm, sympathetic look.

“How’d your day with Lady Andromache go?” he asked.

“It was all right, really. I got to meet the Chapmans, the Warrens, and the Moreaus, and it was good to get to know the lay of the land a little better.”

“But?”

Nile shrugged. “I don’t know. Lady Andromache’s a bit unpredictable, isn’t she? You just never know where to step with her.”

“Eh. She’s less unpredictable once you get to know her, I think,” Joe said. “And she’s warming up to you faster than I’ve ever seen her warm up to anyone. Give her time.” He jostled her companionably with his elbow. “And give yourself time, too, huh? You’ve got plenty on your own plate to deal with.”

He had a very comforting way about him, Nile thought, like someone who would be honest with you but would tell you in the nicest possible way what you needed to hear. “Thanks, Joe.” She met his eyes and smile with her own, and then her eye caught on his book. She’d thought he’d been reading, but he wasn’t—he had a stubby pencil in one hand, and sketched out on the page in front of him was a skilled rendering of Booker scowling at his basil plant.

“Oh, _Joe_ ,” she exclaimed. “This is so good! I forgot that you were an artist!”

His smile turned sheepish. “Well, I don’t get as much time to paint and draw as I’d like. I’m a bit out of practice.”

She playfully cuffed his arm with the back of her hand. “Oh, hush, enough with that false modesty nonsense. This is wonderful!” She looked again at how Joe had captured Booker’s hang-dog expression, the delicate curve of a wilting leaf, and she couldn’t stop herself from smiling at it again. “Can I look at the rest of your book? You don’t have to let me if you don’t want to,” she hurried to say. “But your work is so good, and I’d love to see more of it.”

“Certainly,” he said, handing it over to her with a wink. “Flattery will get you everywhere, Nile.”

Unsurprisingly, thought Nile, Joe had a lot of pictures of Nicky in his sketchbook—Nicky with a book in his hands, Nicky moving a chess piece, and—Nile quickly turned the page on a picture that was clearly Nicky in bed with a sheet draped off of him. Equally unsurprising were the sketches of Booker and Lady Andromache and, sadly, Lady Quỳnh. But Nile was a little surprised that the book included pictures of her. Not a lot, yet, but her at the dinner table and her helping Nicky mix a batch of mildew removal solution and her weeding in the garden with Booker. And even a picture of…

“Is this Lady Andromache out at the Lukyanovs’ yesterday?” It wasn’t really a question, because that was clearly what the picture was of. It was the moment Nile had put her hand on the horse’s quivering neck—there was Lady Andromache, her face grim, and Túča’s wildly rolling eyes, and Lev Lukyanov’s tear-stained face. It was _exactly_ how the scene had been, and Joe hadn’t even been _there_.

Joe nodded.

“ _Joe_ ,” Nile said. “This is _astonishing_. When did you even have time to draw this? It only happened _yesterday_!”

“I draw pretty fast,” said Joe with a shrug. “It’s just a sketch.”

Before Nile could protest that it was incredibly impressive for him to have recreated a scene he hadn’t seen so perfectly and so quickly, Booker cursed at the herbs again, and Nile stood up.

“You need some help there?”

He was trying to brace the faltering basil plants by tying them to little stakes, but he seemed to be fumbling with them—Nile could see that the soil around him was littered with little pieces of twine that he’d dropped in his efforts to keep the plants upright. He looked up at her, his gray eyes melancholy. “You couldn’t do worse at this than I’m doing.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Booker,” said Nile wryly. “How about this, you hold the plants still and I’ll tie them to the stakes?”

He nodded. “Let’s try it.”

She didn’t need to cut new pieces of twine, just picked up the ones he had dropped, and she reached delicately around the fragile stems and Booker’s hands to bind the plants to their stakes. No wonder the plants were struggling, she thought---even with their leaves rotting away, they were top-heavy, and the stems were bent almost to breaking. She ran a finger along one of them, and then another, imagining straightening the plants out like she might a bent hairpin. Finished, she pulled her hands back and brushed the dirt from them. “All done,” she said. “Here’s hoping that helps.”

Booker was frowning at the plants again, albeit a more confused frown this time, like he couldn’t quite figure out what she’d done. He must have been really struggling with those little pieces of twine, she thought. “Yeah,” he said. “Well, we’ll see.”

The raven cawed again, and both of them turned to see the bird perched on the arched doorway of the kitchen. “I think,” said Booker, “that means it’s time for us to go in and wash up for supper.”

Nile stretched out her shoulders, suddenly feeling the strain of a day spent in the saddle, on top of a morning being beaten in a sword fight, suddenly catch up to her aching muscles. “Sounds good to me,” she said. “Do you think the pipes will be able to manage a hot bath for me?”

“Worth a try,” said Joe, who had stood up and was nodding in the direction of the raven. “You’ve had a long day.”

Dinner was a rather more casual affair than even the usual modus operandi at Scythian Woods. With Nicky still gone—Nile could see Lady Andromache peering anxiously at the movement of the sun, and though Joe didn’t seem worried yet, Nile felt a little unsettled by either his absence or Lady Andromache’s unease—they were eating a casserole he had put together before leaving for town that Joe had put into the oven for him. It was delicious, like all his cooking was, but it felt like something was missing. Nicky himself, Nile supposed. She’d gotten used to him peering at her and saying things like, “You look like you could use something that will give you sweet dreams. Here, have this biscuit.”

Still, it was nice to listen to Lady Andromache talk about what she and Nile had done together that day, and for her to turn to Nile and ask her questions, and just generally to feel as if she and the lady were on the same side for once.

It was in this spirit that she said, “We also talked a little about bringing workmen out here to help with some of the repairs.”

“Oh?” Joe raised an eyebrow. “Well, that’s interesting news indeed.”

Lady Andromache shot Nile a reproving look. “We spoke only in hypotheticals,” she said. “Don’t hold your breath waiting for a lot of strangers tramping about here, because it’s not going to happen.”

“Why _not_?” asked Nile, frustrated. “Yes, you told me it would only all get broken again, but at least it would be fixed for a _while_ , and we wouldn’t have to worry about it while we took care of other parts of the manor. Surely it’s foolish not to even _consider_ hiring more workers!”

Booker, eyes wide, darted a look from Lady Andromache to Nile and made a face at Nile, but she was in no mood to take yet another warning about treading lightly.

“I know,” Nile went on, “that you don’t trust strangers. But it wouldn’t even need to be strangers, would it? The people on this estate love you, and you said yourself that you trust the Moreaus. Why couldn’t you hire through them—see if they have friends or family members who could use the work? There’s _so_ much to be done, if you want to save this house, and it’s absurd to think that the five of us can handle it alone!”

Lady Andromache’s mouth tightened into a hard line, and she poked at her casserole with a fork like she was trying to kill it before setting the fork down and narrowing her eyes at Nile. “We got along all right for years before you came, Miss Freeman,” she said, “and we’ll get along for all the years to come, but I’ll be damned if I drag other people down with me into this…this _pit._ ” She set down her napkin. “I’ll talk to Nicky in the morning,” she said in a tone that invited no protest. “Good night.”

At least, thought Nile bleakly as the lady strode out of the kitchen, they’d reached a point in their relationship where Lady Andromache said goodnight before storming out mid-meal. Maybe…maybe they’d reached a point where it might be appropriate to go after her? She started to stand, but Joe lay a restraining hand on her wrist. “Let her go, Nile,” he said, calmly but firmly. He cast a glance to the window. “It’s almost sunset.”

Nile was ready to ask if the woman was afraid of the dark or something, but it seemed more antagonistic than the situation called for. After all, Nile had known for weeks that Lady Andromache was a woman of eccentric habits, and the only thing that was different today was that she’d had some hope that the lady would change those habits for her. But there was no real reason to think that she would.

Bitterly disappointed and feeling foolish about her disappointment, she settled back into her chair to finish her cold casserole.

She would have excused herself to her own bedroom after dinner, as she didn’t feel she was up to sitting around playing cards and chess with Booker and Joe tonight, but Joe straightened in his seat.

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” asked Nile, who hadn’t heard anything.

“Horse,” said Booker. “Nicky’s back!”

They went out the kitchen door to the stables, where sure enough Nicky was brushing down his horse in the dimming twilight, having set a small pile of packages to one side. He looked up as they entered, and Nile was disturbed to see how exhausted and downcast he looked. Nicky so consistently gave off an air of calm pleasantness that it was rather unsettling whenever he was upset.

“Anything, my love?” Joe asked, and Nicky shook his head. Before Nile could ask what he was referring to, Joe leaned forward to rest his forehead against Nicky’s and said, “It’s all right. There was no reason to think you’d find him today.”

Nicky closed his eyes for a long moment, stroking his thumb against Joe’s hand where it rested on his arm, and then he pulled back and mustered a tired smile for Nile. “Hello, Nile,” he greeted. “Booker.” To Nile he said, “We have been looking for an…old acquaintance for a long time. But I begin to think we will never find him again.”

“Oh,” said Nile. She could sympathize—though Scythian Woods was in many ways like its own self-contained little world, Nicky and Joe and Booker and even Lady Andromache probably got lonely at times. They never seemed to have company at the manor—even the tenants never seemed to come to the house--and under such circumstances, being unable to find an old friend must have only exacerbated their loneliness. “I’m sorry.”

Nicky shrugged. “Thank you. So it goes.” His face was cast in shadow, making the dark circles under his eyes seem even darker. He patted his horse’s nose before rubbing at the bridge of his own. “I think it will be an early night for me,” he said.

“It’s been a long day for all of us,” said Joe. “I’m still feeling the pain from the sword fighting this morning. I think a good night’s sleep will do us all some good.”

“Easier said than done,” Booker said, but he didn’t object when they went back inside and upstairs. Joe and Nicky bid Nile goodnight before vanishing into their own room; Booker hovered aimlessly outside the door of his own room for a moment before meeting her eyes with a tired grin. “Well, if everyone else is going to bed,” he said, “I suppose I might as well, too.”

“Might as well,” Nile agreed. “You know, I hear you all chatting in the middle of the night often enough, I think you could actually stand to get some sleep for once.”

He blinked at her for a moment. “Well, when you put it like that,” he said. “Good night, Nile.”

Despite her own exhaustion, Nile took her time getting ready for bed that night. She stretched out her sore muscles again; she lingered over washing her face and massaging her scalp with the lavender-scented oil that always made her feel relaxed and her hair feel luxurious; she curled against the headboard of the book and worked her way through a section of her strange old magic book, losing herself in the esoteric diagrams and the curious or ironic commentary from whoever had taken notes in the book.

By the time true darkness had fallen in her bedroom, her breathing had evened out and her pulse slowed, and she closed her eyes and tried to go to sleep.

For whatever reason, though, her mind refused to shut down. Little bits of her day flitted back through her head. Lady Andromache telling Celeste, _She’s one of us_. The jolt in her arm blocking the lady’s blows with the sword. The dizzying feeling of perfect happiness as they rode over the moors. _I’ll be damned if I drag other people down with me into this pit_. She rolled over and adjusted the covers. Her feet were sweaty, but when she kicked the coverlet off, she was instantly too cold. Her eyes felt gritty and heavy with exhaustion, but with every creak in the floorboards, they flew open again.

She didn’t know how long she lay like that, tossing and turning, staring at the ceiling, closing her eyes and trying to count sheep but soon giving up on it as a lost cause. The moon rose at some point, casting its pale gleams over her battered wooden floor and the night stand, and she’d been awake so long in the dark by that point that it seemed as bright as day.

Somewhere in the house, she heard muffled voices, and she sat up in bed. So much for a good night’s sleep, she thought—apparently she wasn’t the only one who couldn’t will herself into unconsciousness. Pushing the covers off, she went to the wardrobe to grab her housecoat. It wasn’t exactly proper to go downstairs into company in her current state of undress, but it wasn’t as if anything was proper about this household anyway, and she couldn’t imagine that Joe or Nicky or Booker would give a damn how she was dressed.

She wasn’t quite paying attention as she walked down the corridor and to the landing of the stairs—despite her difficulty sleeping, she couldn’t say she was quite awake, either. And yet something in her must have been more on guard than her waking mind, because as she cast her glance down the stairs she froze without quite realizing why. A moment later, her conscious mind caught up to her instinct, and a cold wash of fear flooded her senses.

The woman in white.

The ghostly figure was gliding across the floor of the entryway, apparently coming from the wing with the library and the Grand Sitting Room back toward the kitchen. It didn’t pause or show any other sign that it was aware of Nile, but continued to move with purpose.

Nile swallowed. Perhaps—perhaps she’d fallen asleep after all, and was dreaming.

Or perhaps the house was being broken into, and she was allowing a thief to get away with—with one of the rare books from the library, or the silverware, or something.

She squared her shoulders and slowly, cautiously, made her way down the stairs and in the direction the ghostly woman had gone, trying to stay far enough back that even if the woman turned to look her way, the darkness would protect her from view.

Joe and Nicky and Booker and even Lady Andromache were nowhere to be seen as Nile followed the woman, and she spared a moment to wonder how they could have missed someone breaking into the house. But she didn’t have much thought to spare for questions—instead her mind was fully on keeping her breaths quiet, measuring her footsteps to land softly on the creaky floorboards, not letting the slim white figure with its flowing dark hair out of her sight.

The woman was well and truly aiming for the kitchen. But when she got there, she didn’t go for the silverware, or one of Nicky’s expensive pots and pans, or a knife, or anything one might expect a burglar to seek in a kitchen. Instead, she went to the back door, the one that led out to the kitchen garden and stables. Nile held her breath, readying herself to turn and run and yell for Nicky and Booker and Joe. It was possible that this woman was only one of a gang of thieves, and she was preparing to let them into the house.

The door opened with a rusty squeak of its hinges, and Nile’s pulse raced loud and fast in her ears, and the woman crouched down to welcome…

A wolf?

Nile couldn’t believe her eyes, but there it was, true as life and twice as large. That was a wolf, a huge, gray beast with a bushy tail and a broad chest and a huge, grinning mouth with sharp teeth that gleamed in the moonlight.

She gasped.

In an instant the wolf growled, and the woman turned to look at Nile with an expression of surprise on her face. Something about her looked familiar, but Nile didn’t take the time to think about it—she turned and ran up the stairs and dashed into her room and locked the door behind her, her heart racing and her breath a desperate pant in her chest.

“I’m dreaming,” she told herself. “I’m dreaming. This didn’t happen.”

She threw herself back into bed, not in the hopes that she would go to sleep but for the sake of having the coverlet around her and the comfort of a bed to convince her that she had, in fact, been dreaming. Closing her eyes, she curled up in the bed and told herself again and again that she didn’t believe in ghosts.


	5. Chapter 5

The next time she opened her eyes, morning light was spilling bright and strong across her floor, and she sat up groggily. She must have fallen asleep at some point, because it wasn’t just morning but _late_ morning, far later than she usually awoke. The rest of the household must have already eaten breakfast by this point, she realized, but she went down to the kitchen anyway, the routine of it strangely normal after…whatever had happened last night.

When she reached the kitchen, Nicky was kneading a big ball of dough of some kind and Joe was bent over the kitchen table with his ledger book. They both looked up when she entered.

“Good morning,” Joe said. “How are you feeling? When you didn’t come down for breakfast, we thought you must have been pretty tired from yesterday.”

Nile blinked at him, processing what he was saying. Yesterday already felt like a million years ago. “Yeah,” she said. “Yesterday.”

Nicky paused in his kneading and frowned at her. “Are you all right? You seem…I don’t know, like you have had a shock.”

 _That’s one way of putting it_. She pondered telling them about the ghostly woman she’d seen—on multiple occasions, now—and about how she’d been in the _house_ last night, and how she’d—Nile’s mind ran up against a wall, then. In the light of day, the morning sunlight making the kitchen cheery and warm, with Nicky baking bread and Joe doing the household accounts and everything nice and normal, the idea of some woman letting a _wolf_ into the house sounded absurd, even in the privacy of Nile’s own thoughts. In the light of day, Nile wasn’t sure she hadn’t dreamed it all. It certainly didn’t sound very realistic.

She had been quiet for too long. Nicky wiped his hands on a dish towel and picked up the tea kettle. “Perhaps you should go back to bed,” he said.

“Lady Andromache…” Nile began, and Joe shook his head.

“Don’t worry about her, she went out already. She told us to let you sleep. And looking at you now, I’m thinking that was the right call.”

“Are you saying I look bad?” Nile asked, trying for a joke.

Joe smiled indulgently at her. “Never. I’m saying you had a long day yesterday, and sometimes it takes a little more time to recover from that.” He lay his pencil down and turned his whole body to face her. “Seriously, if you’d like to go back to bed, that’s fine. You’ve done a lot of good work around here, but we can get along without you for one day.”

Nile took a deep breath. She felt like her head was full of cotton wool and her eyes felt gritty. “All right,” she admitted. “A little more sleep might be nice.”

Nicky nodded as if he had expected her to say just this, and walked up to hand her a cup of tea. She breathed in its steam gratefully; it smelled of honey and lavender and chamomile. “Drink that,” he instructed. “It will help you sleep without dreams. I think you need the rest.”

“I think you and my mother would get along very well,” she informed him, taking a sip of the tea. It was hot and sweet and comforting, and suddenly her sleepiness felt pleasant rather than like a pebble in her brain. “Is it all right if I take the cup upstairs with me and finish it in my bedroom?” she asked. “I’ll bring it back down when I wake up.”

He waved a casual hand. “Of course,” he said. “It is no problem.”

“Sleep well,” said Joe, waving her out of the room.

She thanked them and trudged back upstairs, sipping at the tea as she went. She didn’t even bother changing out of her day dress once she got back to her room—she just sat the cup on her nightstand and threw herself into bed, relishing in the softness of the bed and the way that darkness rose up like a comforting blanket to embrace her.

When she woke later, the sun was high in the sky—she checked her pocket watch on the night stand, which told her it was a little past noon. She stretched, feeling a bit more herself, and tried to straighten out her clothing.

Since they’d sent her upstairs to nap, she couldn’t imagine that the men were impatiently waiting her arrival downstairs, so she decided to take a little time to wake up properly before going down to help with whatever it was they were working on today. She flipped open the magic book, but the page she happened to open it to was illustrated with a picture of a ghostly looking man and a description of how living beings could leave an imprint on the lines of magical power around them even after they died, and she shut the book again with a shudder.

Maybe she’d write to her mother or Elijah. That would help her put her thoughts in order and drag her out of that heart-stopping moment last night when the woman had turned to see Nile.

Once she had gotten out a piece of paper and set out her pen and ink, though, she felt herself at a loss for what to say. _Dear Elijah, I think you were right and the house **is** haunted_? _Dear Elijah, do you remember when you were a child and wanted to get a dog? Well, the ghost at this house has a pet **wolf!** Dear Elijah, I think there’s a very good chance that I’m actually losing my mind in this terrible house_.

No. None of that would do. There was no sense in making her brother or her mother worry about her. So instead she decided to share another secret. _Dear Elijah,_ she began _, yesterday my eccentric employer Lady Andromache decided that I wasn’t so bad after all. Don’t tell Mama, but I think I’m a little bit in love with her. She’s amazing—she fights with a sword like a pirate queen and rides a horse like she was born in the saddle, and the tenants on her land love her. Obviously I wouldn’t actually **do** anything, since I work for her, and she’s still in deep mourning for her wife, but there’s something rather nice about cherishing a little romantic sentiment, which is something I haven’t done in a long time_.

There, she thought, pausing over the end of her paragraph. That was something that would please Elijah to know, and it had the advantage of being true.

A hoarse croaking sound interrupted her reflections, and she looked up to see the raven perched on the windowsill.

“If you’re guarding the house,” she told it, “you’re doing a piss-poor job—I hope you know this house has a ghost problem.”

The raven cocked its head at her as if baffled by her words. She couldn’t blame it.

After adding another paragraph about riding around to visit the tenants the previous day (leaving out the strange moment when Lady Andromache had turned grave again and how they’d ridden home in a funk), Nile folded her letter and left it on the desk to be sent the next time one of the men ran errands in town. She was awake and alert now, and her strange dream or supernatural encounter or whatever it was felt a great deal more distant and less ominous.

As she descended the staircase, she began to hear rhythmic, metallic _thunk_ sounds. Frowning, she went down a side corridor, following the noise, to find Joe and Nicky in some kind of closet mucking around with a mess of rusty pipes.

They looked up at her approach and smiled brightly. “Nile!” Joe greeted. “How are you feeling? You look much better.”

“I _feel_ much better,” she said, smiling back at him. “What’s all this?”

Nicky sighed and gestured with his wrench toward the pipe he’d been fiddling with. “All the running water to the baths upstairs stopped working. I swear, the plumbing in this house is the bane of my existence.”

“I thought the library was the bane of your existence,” Nile joked, and Nicky nodded seriously.

“It is also the bane of my existence. My existence has many banes.”

Joe smiled fondly at him. “So dramatic, Nicolò.”

“Speaking of the library,” Nile said as something occurred to her. “Did you remember to get new glass for the window when you went to town yesterday?”

“Ah, yes. The window.” Nicky lay the wrench down on a stool strewn with other random tools, and peered with an unreadable look at Nile. “Yes, I bought new glass. The window is fine.”

Perhaps Joe’s accusation of being dramatic hadn’t been overblown after all, thought Nile. Nicky’s relationship with the library window appeared to be as complex as a tangled love affair, full of anger and mystery. “All right,” she said.

“Thank you for checking on it, Nile,” Joe said. “And for the good job you did fixing it the first time around. I don’t suppose you’d like to try out your knack for fixing things on the pipes here?” He tapped a particularly hideous pipe, dirty and tarnished and crusted over with rust, and made a face at it. “You won’t believe me when I tell you,” he said, “but this damned thing is only a few months old. I don’t know what we could possibly have done to it to make it look this bad, but there you have it.”

Nile shrugged, not sure if she believed him about how new the pipe was. On the other hand, it _was_ Scythian Woods. “I don’t know much about plumbing,” she said.

“I don’t think you need to know much,” Joe went on. “Nicky bought a replacement length of pipe for it yesterday, and we’ve already measured it out—it ought to fit. If you’ll hold it in place, he and I will screw it in so it stays put.”

“And that’ll get the job done?” asked Nile skeptically. From the sounds of their loud banging around earlier, it seemed to her as if the problem would take more than a quick swapping of parts.

Nicky shrugged. “We have cleaned the water heater. We have checked the fixtures in all the bathrooms. We have replaced the rusted bolts and places where pipes have come loose. If this _doesn’t_ fix it, I give up, and you can help us persuade Lady Andromache to hire a craftsman who knows this business better than we do.”

She had to laugh at that, both at Nicky’s matter-of-fact, slightly exasperated tone and at the idea that after years of trying to handle all the work themselves, that these pipes would be what finally got them on Nile’s side and convinced them to put a little pressure on lady Andromache. “Now there’s a bargain I can’t turn down,” she said. “Where do you want me to put this pipe again?”

They showed her, and she held the pipe in place while they screwed it in. “What do you think?” asked Joe as if Nile were the expert. “Did that work?”

He didn’t _sound_ like he were joking around with her, so she took the question seriously. “I think so,” she said. “It _felt_ right, anyway.” And it had—maybe it was just that the pipe looked so solid and sturdy compared to the rusty piece of trash they were replacing, but Nile had had a feeling as she eased it into place that gave her sense of déjà vu, a vaguely familiar sensation of things that were wrong being put right, of everything falling into place. It was, now that she thought of it, the opposite sensation of the sinking feeling she had any time she walked into Scythian Woods, which had never ceased to strike her with its gloominess even as the house became more familiar to her.

“Well, only one way to know for sure,” said Nicky, and he straightened up to wipe grease and flakes of rust on his trousers. He gestured with his head toward the door. “Shall we try the bath in the hall first?”

They went upstairs to the hall bath chamber, and Nile held her breath as Joe bent to the tap in the bath. As it gave way with a squeak and clear, steaming water flowed into the tub, she and Nicky cheered as if they were watching a race and their horse had just come in first.

“Well done, everyone!” Joe bowed to them with a little flourish, and with cheerful spirits, Nile bowed back to him, and they nodded in mutual acknowledgement. “You have a real knack for this plumbing, Nile,” he added.

It wasn’t like she’d really done much of anything, but the words still felt good. “Thank you,” she said.

The next bath chamber they tested was the one in Lady Andromache’s room. Nile was hesitant—in her weeks at the manor, she’d never seen the inside of the lady’s bedroom, and it felt like an unforgiveable intrusion into her privacy to cross the threshold. But Joe and Nicky peered curiously at her as she paused, and Nicky said, “She does not keep dead spouses in here like Bluebeard, Nile. I clean it regularly, there are no secrets inside.”

Feeling silly, Nile trailed them to the bath chamber, peering around at the room as she went. She wasn’t entirely sure what she’d expected from Lady Andromache’s bedroom—a cache of weapons, perhaps? A collection of paintings of horses? Whatever pile of gold she had to be sitting on to keep this estate from completely crumbling to ashes? But instead, the room seemed…surprisingly normal. It had the same aura of fading grandeur as Nile’s own bedroom, and, she presumed, the others on this floor, with a large four-poster bed, an antique-looking set of chests and wardrobes in a dark-colored wood, and another expensive-looking rug on the floor. But it was extremely neat, with no haphazard clothes flung over a chair or tea cup left on the nightstand or anything out of place. It didn’t show much of Lady Andromache’s personality, thought Nile—there wasn’t much sign, indeed, that anyone lived in this room at all, much less the strange, lively, forceful character that was Lady Andromache.

The bath chamber, at least, looked as if someone used it, with combs and other toilette articles on the dressing table, and Nile was unaccountably relieved to see the signs of use. Joe and Nicky, of course, ignored all of this with the ease of familiarity, and tested the tap in the bathtub with less ceremony than they had the one in the hall.

It, too, worked, and they smiled at each other in satisfaction. Joe sighed happily. “Ah, it’s like we live in a modern house again. Let’s enjoy it while it lasts.”

Nicky made the little huffing, snorting sound that Nile had come to recognize as his usual laugh. “Let us see how long that is,” he said to Joe. To Nile, he said, “You won’t believe this, but when we first came to live in this house, it was the most modern in the county. It was the first to have running water, and gas for the lights, and the kitchen was the most up-to-date one _I_ had ever worked in.”

Nile tried to picture it. It wasn’t as hard as Nicky might have thought—it fit well into the portrait she had begun to paint in her mind of young Lady Andromache and Lady Quỳnh, active young women who played musical instruments and practiced their sword fighting and traveled the world. Of course they’d thrown themselves into updating their house. And of course it had been the marvel of the neighborhood. They would have hosted parties there, where they delighted in shocking the stuffy gentry of the county, and where they had Nicky prepare elaborate and exotic feasts, and where Lady Quỳnh would have played the pianoforte and Lady Andromache would have glowed with pride to watch her.

Once again she felt a prick of sorrow that she would never get to meet _that_ Lady Andromache, in _that_ Scythian Woods. “I would have loved to see that,” she said.

Joe smiled sadly. “We would have loved to have you there. Those were good times.”

“Speaking of time.” Nicky pulled a pocket watch out of the pocket of his now-dirty trousers, and frowned at it. “I need to get started on supper,” he said. “Do you think you two can take care of the mess in the boiler room?”

“Not to worry, my love,” said Joe, waving Nicky away with a casual hand. “I think Nile and I can manage putting a few wrenches away, don’t you?”

“I’ve been told I have a knack for plumbing,” said Nile sententiously, and she was rewarded by another of Nicky’s small laughs.

It didn’t take long to get the tools squared away and for Nile and Joe to rejoin Nicky in the kitchen. Joe dug his sketchbook out again, and Nile watched him with curiosity. She’d always had a fondness for art, and to live with someone who had real skill for it offered an opportunity to watch as the angles of limbs and the curves of tree branches and the play of light over the surfaces of the kitchen took shape on his page. It was Nicky—no surprise there—but Nicky in his element in the kitchen, chopping vegetables while something bubbled on the stove, as the trees blew in the wind in the kitchen garden, visible over his shoulder on one side of the page. Joe noticed he had an audience, but he only winked at Nile and angled himself at the table so she could see his sketchbook more easily.

Nile was so focused on the movement of his pencil that she was startled when Booker and Lady Andromache stomped in through the kitchen door, Booker holding a handful of basil and Lady Andromache holding a puny, twisted carrot.

“We bring you the fruits of our labors!” announced Booker, presenting Nicky with the basil. “I’m including you in that, Nile," he added over his shoulder. “This is from the basil plants you helped me with yesterday.”

Nicky raised an eyebrow and sniffed at the leaves. “Impressive,” he said. “This is certainly the nicest-looking basil that garden has produced in years.”

“Our Nile is a woman of many talents,” said Joe. “Gardening, plumbing….”

“Perhaps she might turn her attention to the carrots,” interrupted Lady Andromache. “Look at this sorry specimen!” She held up the carrot for them to see.

It was, indeed, a rather pathetic sight, but if Lady Andromache was blaming her and Booker for it, it was poor form, thought Nile with a hint of irritation. God only knew how anything grew on this miserable estate. “I don’t know when I’ll have time for carrots,” she said with a little asperity, “if I’m busy accompanying you. I did think that was what we agreed on yesterday?”

It was as if she’d flung a lit match onto a pile of straw and they were only waiting for it to go up in flames. Joe set down his sketchbook and Nicky the basil, both looking at Lady Andromache as if to see what she would do, and Booker looked between Nile and the lady with a weary kind of nervousness, as if he didn’t particularly relish the idea of being between them at the moment.

Lady Andromache, however, didn’t lose her temper. She set the carrot down on the kitchen counter. Regarding Nile with steady gray eyes, she said, “Nicky, I think my companion and I will eat in the formal dining room tonight. Alone.”

Nicky’s eyes widened, and he blinked a few times, but his voice was as calm as ever as he said, “Ah. Of course, my lady.”

If Joe and Booker were offended at being excluded, they didn’t look it. Instead, Booker said, “I’ll go set the dining room table,” with evident relief, and Joe picked up his sketchbook and, with a nod to Lady Andromache, said, “We’ve aired the dining room recently, but if you’ll give me just one minute, I’ll go make sure the room’s fit to eat in.”

“If you like,” said Lady Andromache with a shrug. “You know I’m not particular.” Booker made a face at that but didn’t say anything, and Joe gave her a bland look, which she ignored. As they left the room, she turned back to Nicky and asked casually, as if this wasn’t obviously an unusual occurrence in this household, “What’s for dinner?”

Nicky picked up Booker’s basil again and contemplated it. “Tomato and basil salad to start,” he announced. “And then roast pheasant with bread and mushroom stuffing.” He fixed Lady Andromache with a look. “For pleasant conversation and calm relaxation.” There was a distinct undertone in his voice that said, _if this supper ends in anything other than pleasant conversation and calm relaxation, you’ll be hearing about it from me_.

Lady Andromache received this warning with a warm little smile and said, “Sounds good.”

Nile didn’t know what to say to that, to any of it. She thought about offering to go upstairs and change into more formal dress, but as Lady Andromache showed no signs of dressing for supper herself, she supposed it wasn’t worth bothering with.

True to his word, Joe reappeared after a minute or so of awkward silence to inform them that the dining room was ready, and Nile followed Lady Andromache there, trying to echo her confident stride.

It was clear that nobody had eaten in the formal dining room in a long time, what with the random knickknacks piled in the corner that looked as if they’d been hastily removed from the table, but Joe and Booker had done a good job of quickly dusting off the table, laying out a white tablecloth, and setting the table with a nice set of floral-patterned ceramic dishes that gave it a pretty, spring-like air. Lady Andromache settled herself in at the head of the table with no hesitation, resting her elbows on it and gesturing to Nile to sit, so she gingerly sat at the place setting to the lady’s right and sipped at the water goblet either Joe or Booker had set beside her plate.

“May I ask why you wanted to eat in here tonight, my lady?” she asked.

Lady Andromache gave her an amused look. “Well, it looked like you had something to say to me, and I thought you might feel more comfortable saying it with the boys out of the room.”

Nile set the goblet down. “Listen, my lady,” she said. “I know I’m partially to blame for this, sleeping in this morning, and I apologize for that. But I seem to remember you telling me yesterday that things were going to be different between us—I think the words ‘the lady’s companion job of your life’ were used?”

“Doesn’t sound like me,” said Lady Andromache with that same amused look, and Nile felt a surge of irritation.

“I suppose not, since from what I know about lady’s companion jobs, they don’t usually involve the lady in question storming out of the room every time her companion tries to talk to her and riding off without her every morning.”

Lady Andromache’s face lost its amused look and settled into more solemn lines, and she took a sip of her own water and cleared her throat before speaking. “You’re right,” she said. “I’ve behaved very rudely to you. And especially after apologizing to you for the exact same thing only yesterday.”

“I just….” Nile searched for the words that would say what she wanted. “If you don’t want a lady’s companion, and you’ve only agreed to have me here for Nicky and Joe and Booker’s sake, that’s fine. I’m happy to help them around the house, or—or leave, if that’s what you want. But it bothers me, to be treated one minute as if I’m a member of the household and the next to be treated as if I’m some intruder in your home. I like it here.”

It was a strange thing to say, given the disastrous nature of the house and the way her relationship with Lady Andromache had been going, and the…ghost, or curse, or whatever was the matter with Scythian Woods. But it was true. “I like the rest of the staff here, and I like feeling useful around the manor, and I like _you_. But I’m not going to stay and be treated poorly, not for any amount of money.”

“And you shouldn’t,” said Lady Andromache. Her eyes were heavy and sad. Nile refused to let herself be persuaded by the lady’s grief into letting this drop.

“I know you’re in mourning,” she said. “And I sympathize. It isn’t the same, but you know that I know what it’s like to lose someone. I don’t want to—criticize the things you’ve done to grieve, or pry into your life, or disrupt your life here. I only want you to let me help, with whatever it is you need, and for you to tell me when I’ve stepped wrong rather than running away from me.”

Lady Andromache was silent for a long moment, and Nile wondered if she would stomp out of the dining room the way she always left the kitchen, leaving Nile here alone at this grand table. Absurdly, the thought made her stomach sink with sadness.

She didn’t stomp out, though. Instead, she gave Nile a small, wistful smile and said, “You have so much potential, you know?”

This was not what Nile had expected her to say. “Thank you.”

“I’m serious. Joe and Booker and Nicky have told me about all the ways you’ve helped them. It’s not like it’s an easy job keeping this house running, but you seem to be taking to it like a fish to water. You’re young, and talented, and clever. I hate the idea of you getting…trapped in this house, the way we have.”

Nile thought about pointing out that Lady Andromache wasn’t trapped, either, not really. She could always _sell_ Scythian Woods, or demolish it and build a smaller, nicer house that her staff could keep in better repair, or hell, just up and leave in the middle of the night to go travel the world again. But whatever reasons Lady Andromache had for _not_ doing those things, maybe they weren’t things she needed to be reminded of now. “I’m not trapped here,” she said. “I’m here because I want to be.”

“Why?” asked Lady Andromache, staring at Nile as if she intensely wanted to know the answer to this. “Why would you come here? Why would you want to stay?”

It was on the tip of Nile’s tongue to tell the lady what she’d told her mother and brother, what she’d told Nicky and Joe and Booker when they’d asked, that she wanted to do something worthwhile with her time and the physical work, pleasant company, and satisfaction of watching dirty things wiped clean and broken things fixed was enough to make her happy. But she hesitated. If she wanted openness and trust from Lady Andromache, perhaps she needed to offer some in return.

“Do you remember yesterday,” she said, “when I told you about how I lost my father, and how I feared my mother had lost me, too?”

“I remember,” said Lady Andromache seriously.

“Well. Something happened to me, when I was in the navy.”

She paused at the sound of footsteps—Nicky, who gave them both an apologetic smile and set plates of tomato-basil salad in front of them quietly before leaving again. Nile waited for his footsteps to grow soft and fade away entirely in the corridor before she began to speak again.

“I was trained in navy intelligence. Not—I wasn’t some sort of daring spy, or anything, quite the opposite. I was a corporal in charge of a unit that did counterintelligence. We’d been tasked with rooting out a spy, a man who’d found sensitive information about troop movements and, according to my lieutenant, was going to use that information to ambush a unit of infantry on the Continent. There would be dozens, if not hundreds, of casualties.” She swallowed. “I don’t know if that was true. But I believed it then, and my unit—me, Dizzy, Jay, and Gita—were assigned to find him.

“We looked for months. After clearing the rest of our shipmates from suspicion, we split from the ship and searched the rest of the area. Gita spoke the language, and Dizzy and Jay and I knew enough to pass as locals. He was unknown to us, but not to the people in the area—they knew him as a dangerous man, someone not to be trifled with. They knew people he’d killed, not just soldiers but civilians he’d killed because they’d gotten in his way. But they didn’t know where he was.

“For a long time, all we had was rumors. But then the information started getting more solid—they hadn’t just seen him, they’d seen him recently, or knew where he’d been a few days ago, or knew where he’d be going next. We were closing in.

“And then one day, we finally reached the town where he was staying before he’d left it. The innkeeper gave him away, told us she didn’t think much of a man who claimed to be fighting for his country but regularly killed his countrymen. We cleared the inn of the rest of the guests so no bystanders would be hurt. And then we moved in.

We caught him by surprise. But he was the kind of man who was never surprised for long. He moved for his rifle, and I shot him with my pistol. I’d never shot anyone before.” Nile swallowed, feeling the kick of the gun against her hand, smelling the powder. She met Lady Andromache’s eyes, not sure if she’d be able to continue the story.

To her surprise, Lady Andromache didn’t look horrified or skeptical, but infinitely sympathetic, like she knew exactly what Nile had felt in that moment, and wanted nothing more than to soothe away the pain of it. Her hand was warm and heavy as she lay it on Nile’s, and Nile took a deep breath and continued.

“We needed him alive, to know what he knew about our troop movements and who he’d told. I knew enough field medicine to keep him stable until a surgeon could remove the ball from his shoulder. But he knew why I was treating him, and he wasn’t about to tell us anything. He reached for a knife he had in his belt, and he slashed my throat and then his own.

“I thought I was dying. I honestly thought I would meet my maker then and there. I lay there and stared at the ceiling while Dizzy tried to keep my throat together and wished that I could see my mother one more time. But then….”

“But then?” asked Lady Andromache softly.

“But then I woke up in the hospital, and it seemed as if the wound wasn’t so deep at all, because there wasn’t a mark on me. The surgeon told me that throat wounds can bleed a lot, but that he hadn’t actually seen a cut to stitch. He thought it must have only been a scratch. But it wasn’t. I know it wasn’t, and Dizzy knew it wasn’t.” She bit her lower lip at the pain of the memory.

“We’d been so close, you know? Me and Dizzy and Jay and Gita. Sisters in arms. But after that, I…I couldn’t explain what had happened. And Dizzy couldn’t wrap her head around it, couldn’t stop thinking about how I’d survived. It got to where she couldn’t even look at me. And Jay and Gita were in the middle of it, and then I got a discharge from the navy, which was basically a way to tell me I’d screwed up by letting the spy kill himself, and I just….” She shook her head. “I don’t know. I still dream about it. I _feel_ like I died, but I didn’t. I should be happy about it, and I _am_ , I’m grateful I got to go home, but it’s been so hard trying to work out what I’m supposed to _do_ with myself now. What do I do with this life I never expected to have?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it,” said Lady Andromache, her voice still quiet. “What do we do with this time we’ve been granted, long past the time we should have died?”

Nile supposed that Lady Quỳnh dying had been, for Lady Andromache, like dying herself. That a part of Lady Andromache really _had_ died. It wasn’t the same thing, she knew, but she couldn’t imagine, looking at Lady Andromache, that the other woman didn’t understand precisely how she felt. “Yes,” she agreed. “I guess that is the question. I didn’t have an answer to it, and then Mr. Copley told my mother you were looking for a lady’s companion.”

Lady Andromache’s solemn expression broke at that, and she grinned a little ironically. “Of course,” she said. She nodded as if to herself.

“Anyway.” Nile felt as if she’d been sobbing, all wrung-out and wiped blank, but she hadn’t actually shed a tear. She almost wished she had burst out into tears, if only because it might relieve the sudden awkwardness she felt, or at least make _Lady Andromache_ feel awkward instead of Nile. “You asked why I was here, and that’s why.”

The lady seemed to suddenly remember that she was holding Nile’s hand, and she let go of it. Looking for the first time at the tomato salad that had been sitting neglected in front of her, she shoved a forkful of tomato in her mouth and chewed, visibly thinking. After a moment that seemed too quick, given how big a bite she’d taken, she swallowed and said, “I don’t have to tell you that I wasn’t in the market for a lady’s companion.”

“No, you don’t,” said Nile, her embarrassment deepening.

“But that doesn’t mean I didn’t need one. Didn’t need you.” Nile felt her heart stop at the words, but the lady wasn’t done. “Miss Freeman, I….”

“Call me Nile,” she interrupted. At Lady Andromache’s look of mild surprise, she felt herself flushing, but she kept her face firm. Given what she’d just told the woman, it seemed absurd of her to stand on ceremony, when everyone else in the household had been calling her Nile for weeks.

Apparently recovered from her surprise, Lady Andromache smiled. “Nile, then. And I suppose you ought to call me Andy.”

Now it was Nile’s turn to be surprised. “Andy?”

Lady Andromache—Andy—shrugged. “The boys have been on their best manners for you, but that’s what they usually call me, and I suppose if we’re being informal, we might as well go all the way with it.”

“Andy,” Nile said again, savoring the feel of it in her mouth.

“Nile,” said Andy, her smile growing. “I can’t promise you that anything will get better about this mansion—you know what a wreck it is. And I’ll probably drive you mad regularly. I’m old and set in my ways and sometimes need someone to point out when I’m being a stubborn old fool.”

Nile objected to this. “You’re not _old_.”

Andy gave her a strange look. “I’m _ancient_ , Nile. And I don’t trust change. But you’re good for this place. Good for me. And if you’re looking for something to do with your time….” She tapped her fork on the edge of her plate in a nervous gesture. “Spend it with me?”

There was something achingly vulnerable about her face, as if she really cared what Nile answered, and Nile wanted very badly to take Andy’s face in her hands and kiss her. _No_ , she told herself. _My God, Nile Freeman, you finally get the chance at a good relationship with your employer—your **grieving** employer who just admitted she didn’t trust easily, and you want to make advances at her like a lovestruck schoolgirl?_

“Of course, Andy,” she said, hoping none of her thoughts showed on her face. “Of course I’ll spend it with you.”

They met each other’s eyes, then, and Nile felt like she could bask forever in Andy’s warm gray gaze, the way her faint crow’s feet crinkled when she smiled, the way the dim light of the gas chandelier above their heads made little glints of gold sparkle in her eyes.

And then there was a knock on the door frame and Joe, Nicky, and Booker tentatively poked their heads into the dining room. “Pheasant?” offered Joe.

“There’s also carrot,” said Nicky. “But not a lot. It was a very small carrot.”

Nile and Andy looked back at each other, and then Andy threw her head back and laughed, and Nile thought she would float away her heart was so light.

In the weeks that followed, Nile managed to hold on more or less to that happiness. To the surprise of the men, Andy stopped riding out every day—she still rode to a tenant’s house to catch a stray sheep or worked on the roads or just spent time on Luna galloping under the spring sky more days than not, but at least once or twice a week she stayed at the manor to help Joe and Nicky and Booker with whatever it was they were working on.

Nile loved both the days they went out and the days they stayed in. On the days they took Luna and Gringalet and rode out on the moors, she got to see Andy in her element, how the tenants treated her as a beloved and trusted constant in their lives who could be relied upon to help fix their problems and look out for their welfare. Sometimes she even got to see Andy recapture that sense of freedom as they rode their horses as fast as they would go across a grassy meadow.

On the days they stayed at the manor, she got to see the love and loyalty that had clearly kept the men working at Scythian Woods despite the hardship and loss of the last few years. No chore was beneath Andy—depending on who needed her most on any day, she helped Booker replant dead herbs, or sat in the library going through receipts with Joe, or worked with Nicky to give the formal dining room a more thorough cleaning.

They also started regularly training with weapons in the mornings, and that was amazing, too. She didn’t know exactly what armies Andy and the men had fought for, but it soon became clear that Joe, Nicky, and Booker were only out of practice with swords when it came to Andy—any of them could beat Nile easily, but was always happy to give her tips and cheer her on when she landed or dodged a blow. Booker knew everything there was to know about different kinds of weapons and their construction, Nicky was an astonishingly good shot with both guns and the bow and arrow that he apparently still trained with, and Joe knew more kinds of hand-to-hand combat styles than Nile had even known existed.

Andy, well, Andy was a force of nature.

Swords, knives, axes, guns, fists, Andy was expert in all of them. Nile had never seen anyone so totally comfortable in her own skin, so absolutely certain of her body’s abilities. It was a thing of beauty to watch her, and Nile felt honored to be allowed to train with her, with all of them.

Really, it was only the nights that kept her from being blissfully happy.

No matter how she coaxed, Andy still vanished as soon as the sun looked ready to go down. Nile missed her in the evenings, but this on its own wouldn’t have been so bad, as the men were always ready to stay up and play chess or read or just chat with her in the evenings. But when she went to bed, she had to face the undeniable fact that, though she’d never believed in ghosts, there was something genuinely strange going on at Scythian Woods.

Sometimes, on the verge of sleep, Nile would hear an unfamiliar woman’s voice. A wolf howling, so close it sounded like it was right outside her window. She knew that sometimes Booker or Nicky or Joe would stay up late, and that the house was hardly quiet in the best of circumstances, but sometimes a creaking floor or the sound of horse’s hooves would startle her awake, breathing hard and bathed in cold sweat. She hadn’t seen the strange woman again, no. But sometimes in her sleep she would dream of her, a vaguely familiar woman with long black hair and a mournful expression. Sometimes in her dreams the woman was in the house, sometimes riding a horse on the moors, and sometimes—most of the times—she was accompanied by a huge gray wolf.

In her letters to Elijah, she dropped joking references to dream symbolism, asking what it meant to dream about a woman and a wolf. Elijah, who had always been cautious with Nile’s heart, didn’t treat the question as a joke at all but suggested with all the gentle earnestness he could muster that maybe her subconscious mind was being too hard on her, that maybe she was nervous about her affection for the grieving widow she worked for.

Though she knew he meant it in kindness, there was something terrifying about this suggestion. The woman in her dreams _did_ look like the portrait of Lady Quỳnh in the library, and maybe Nile _had_ created this haunting in her own mind as a way to punish herself for her yearning for Andy. She didn’t know if that would be better or worse than actually being haunted by Lady Quỳnh. Neither the prospect of losing her grasp on reality nor the prospect of being haunted by the doubtless jealous ghost of her employer’s wife was particularly appealing.

One night, she dreamed of the ghostly woman saying her name. She didn’t fall asleep again until just before dawn.

She was grouchy during weapons practice that morning, and not terribly interested in breakfast. Andy joked that her surliness must be rubbing off on Nile—though in all honestly, Andy had been in an uncharacteristically good mood the whole week. Joe and Nicky looked at her with concern, and Nicky offered her tea that he said would give her energy, which she accepted, but which didn’t improve her mood much.

Probably in the hopes of avoiding Nile’s foul mood, Andy ended up with Nicky and Joe cleaning the library again—this time the roof was leaking after a heavy rain the previous day, thus proving that the library really _was_ the bane of Nicky’s life. Somehow Nile had ended up with Booker, who was trying to remove the creeping ivy from the west wall of the house without ripping out the stone of the house along with it. The ivy was remarkably persistent.

The work suited Nile’s mood, though—she could be as rough with the plants as she liked, and there was a certain satisfaction in tearing them down and tossing them into the wheelbarrow. Booker was easy enough to work with, not being the type to start a conversation to make one feel better when what one really wanted was to stew in one’s own juices, and they worked companionably enough together for a few hours.

As the sun started to rise in the sky, warming the gray morning, and their friend the raven came to watch their work, Nile began to feel remorseful for her sour mood. “I’m sorry I’ve been such a pain this morning,” she said to Booker. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”

Booker made a sound like _meh_ without opening his mouth, the verbal equivalent of a shrug. “You’re fine,” he said. “You just seemed a bit tired.”

“I am,” said Nile. An ivy vine caught in her thick gardening glove, and she pulled off her other glove to detach it. Focusing on the glove gave her a handy excuse to avoid Booker’s eyes as she said, “Can I ask you something?”

“Certainly,” said Booker. “Can’t promise you’ll like the answer, though.” He was always saying things like that—there was a kind of gloomy irony to him that sometimes made him and Andy seem like mirror images of each other and sometimes rubbed Andy the wrong way. Nile was fond of him but suspected that he needed the occasional reminder to pull his head from his ass that Joe and Nicky provided.

“Do you remember the first night I was here, you told me that strange things happened at Scythian Woods? And how you thought the place wasn’t haunted, but cursed?”

Booker straightened from the vine he’d been tugging at to give Nile a troubled look. “I remember,” he said.

“Well,” said Nile. She couldn’t _quite_ make herself tell Booker about the dreams, or the woman and the wolf, so instead she said, “Are you _sure_ it’s not haunted?”

She’d thought she made it sound like a joke—maybe the sort of joke that had just a hint of seriousness underneath. She hoped Booker would laugh, or raise an eyebrow at her, or explain that he’d been courting a woman from Riverside who only came over at night for…reasons. But instead he looked at her with serious eyes and said, “No. I’m not sure at all. What have you seen?”

Maybe he had seen the woman, too. He sounded as if he had something particular in mind with that question, and Nile was struck with a sudden, lurking suspicion that Booker knew very well about the ghost woman. “Tell me honestly, Booker,” she said. “Is there a ghost here?”

His eyes met hers for a brief moment before sliding away, and Nile felt her stomach sink with incredulous disappointment. “No,” he said. “There’s no ghost here.”

He was _lying_ to her. Or at least not telling her something. She wanted to push, wanted to demand that he tell her just what he’d meant that first night by ‘cursed,’ because it pretty obviously referred to something more than the fact that the soil here was terrible and everything in the house seemed to break as soon as it was fixed.

But she didn’t think pressing Booker would get her the answers she’d want. If he wasn’t going to tell her, she couldn’t make him. So instead she switched the conversation to the leak in the roof, and whether it had done much damage dripping into the library, and she waited.

Everyone seemed relieved at luncheon that she was in a better frame of mind, which told Nile she was doing a good job at covering her suspicions. Andy asked her if she’d like to join her and Joe and Nicky in the library afterward, and Nile casually suggested that Booker could use a hand with the ivy, and her hands were getting sore—maybe she and Andy should switch places.

Andy was amenable to that, and Joe and Nicky seemed genuinely pleased about working with Nile. She started to think that she was getting a little paranoid about the whole thing—but then she remembered Booker’s obvious lie, the way he hadn’t been able to look at her while he said it, and she was determined to press on.

They finished luncheon—a dish of noodles and basil sauce from Nicky’s homeland, which he thanked Nile and Booker for helping him make by tending the basil in the kitchen garden—and Nile followed Joe and Nicky back to the library.

As usual, the books had had to be moved from their shelves so that they wouldn’t be damaged, this time from the water leaking through the ceiling. Nicky saw Nile staring at the big wet spot on the ceiling and made an eloquent gesture of frustration with one hand. “If it isn’t one thing, it’s another,” he said. “Besides fixing the roof, I think we will need to replaster the whole ceiling. The last thing one wants in a library is mold.”

Joe shuddered. “Ugh. One time dealing with that was _more_ than enough.”

Nile gave them her best sympathetic smile, and gestured to the window. “Hey, at least the new window is holding up?”

Gazing at it with a funny little smile of his own, Joe nodded. “Yes, it is,” he said. “It’s holding up very nicely.”

Andy had helped them dry the floorboards to avoid rot in the morning, but the wall nearest the leak was dripping with grayish, dirty water, and the plaster of the ceiling was bulging with water even where it wasn’t leaking, causing bubbles that threatened to pop over other areas of the library. Nile helped them scrub the walls and carefully, carefully drill holes into the plaster bubbles so that they could catch the dirty water in buckets before it burst all over the books. She waited until the danger to the books had passed before asking casually, “Have you seen any strange women around the manor at night?”

Joe fumbled with the cloth he’d been using to wipe up the floors and looked quickly at Nicky, who’d frozen in place with his own cloth, before looking back to Nile, his face composed into an expression that was as calculatedly casual as Nile’s tone had been. “What do you mean, strange women? I assume you’re _not_ referring to yourself and Andy.”

“No,” said Nile, not even dignifying the feeble joke with a smile. “I’m referring to a strange woman with long black hair who wanders around at night with a wolf.”

“Ah.” Joe looked pained. He and Nicky had what looked like a complete conversation with their eyes, and then he turned to Nile and said, “So you’ve seen this woman.”

“Yes.”

“And you want to know if _we’ve_ seen her.”

“We have.” Nicky’s eyes met Nile’s squarely as he said it, but his hands were worrying anxiously at the cloth in his hands.

Now they were getting somewhere. “Who is she?” she asked. “A ghost? Some local vagrant who wanders into the house at night? Booker’s secret paramour?”

Nicky snorted a laugh at that, but he didn’t look amused. Which was good, because neither was Nile.

“We, ah.” Joe scratched at his beard. “We can’t tell you.”

“What?” Nile narrowed her eyes at him. “What do you mean, you can’t tell me?”

“Just what I said. We promised that we wouldn’t tell you. Not yet, anyway.”

Nile couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She couldn’t believe that Joe and Nicky, who’d talk about their own relationship at the drop of a hat, who’d answered all of her questions and told her stories about everything from the art on the walls to the history of the pots in the kitchen, who’d listened to her fears and offered earnest, kind advice, were refusing even to tell her whether this woman was alive or not. The more she thought about it, the angrier she got—surely they must have realized why this was why she couldn’t sleep at night sometimes. Surely they must have realized that if she of all people were offering the possibility that this woman was a ghost, that she was afraid. That fear hardened within her, and she glared at them as coldly as she could. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll ask Andy. Maybe she’ll be interested in why her staff is hiding some strange woman while she’s asleep at night.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” said Joe, wincing.

“Why not?” She snorted. “Because it’ll get you in trouble?”

“Because it will hurt her, and it will not get you the answers you want,” said Nicky steadily.

“How do you know?”

“Because it is she who ordered us not to tell you about this woman.” Nicky was giving Nile the kind of intense stare he had given her the first night she had met. Nile remembered thinking at the time that it was intimidating, but she didn’t feel intimidated now, just baffled and furious. “We think you should know, Nile. You _will_ know, believe us. Just not right now.”

Nile felt dizzy. If _Andy_ had ordered them not to tell her….Wild possibilities swam through her head, none of them good. Perhaps the woman was some actress, paid to pretend to be Andy’s dead wife at night so that no one would know of it during the day. Perhaps she was some kind of relative, kept prisoner during the day so that she couldn’t threaten Andy’s claim to the house and land. Perhaps—Nile shuddered to consider it—perhaps she really was the ghost of Lady Quỳnh, and she was haunting the manor because someone who lived there had killed her.

Perhaps _Andy_ had killed her.

“Why,” she said, her voice a croak to her own ears, “should I believe you? Why should I believe anything any of you tell me?” They’d been cagey with her from the beginning, she realized. Never telling her exactly how long they’d been here or when Lady Quỳnh had died. That strange moment at the Moreaus’ farm when Andy had said she was older than she looked. The fact that Nicky and Joe’s names were _clearly_ not “Nicholas Smith” and “Joseph Jones”—Nile had let it pass without question when they’d referred to each other as ‘Nicolò” and “Yusuf,” but in the light of the strange secret at the heart of this strange little household, it became clear that this was all part of the same deception.

Everyone in the house had secrets. Now Nile was the only one who had shared all of hers, and who knew whether she would live to regret it?

She ran from the library and up the stairs, ignoring Nicky and Joe’s voices calling after her. She ran, heart pounding, into her room, locking the door behind her and, for good measure, pushing the nightstand in front of it.

She sat huddled in her bed for a while. Nicky and Joe, and then Booker, came to knock on her door and try to coax her out, but she ignored them, and eventually they all went away. The sun lowered on the horizon, then set, and she supposed that somewhere in the house, Andy was going to bed, or sneaking out with the woman who looked like her dead wife, or whatever the hell it was she did at night, but if anyone went to the master suite down the hall, she didn’t hear it.

It was only when she heard the sound of raised voices coming from downstairs that she realized that she had fallen asleep. The room was dark, the half-moon hidden behind a cloud, and Joe, Nicky, and Booker were arguing downstairs.

Nile shivered. She’d have to leave, wouldn’t she? But how? How would she get home? She’d gotten her first month’s pay, measured out in large-denomination bills by Joe from the cash box in the den where he stored the manor’s financial records, but for that money to mean anything, she’d have to make it to town, or at least to the road where she could find someone who _wasn’t_ one of Andy’s tenants.

Her heart was pounding so loudly in her ears that it took her a moment to realize that the rhythm of her pulse was echoed by the harsh sound of a horse’s hooves against the gravel road outside. She uncurled her stiff body from its tight crouch on the bed and made her way over to the window.

It was her. The woman. The ghost, maybe. And she was riding Andy’s horse. The black curves of Luna’s body were a stark contrast against the pale gray of the gravel and the white of the woman’s dress. Her hair shone in the dim moonlight, a soft glow that made her seem as if she had a faint halo.

Nile didn’t know what rash impulse possessed her to pull on her boots and change into the trousers and shirt she used for weapons training. After all, she wasn’t sure she really _wanted_ to know who this woman was, and just trying to get out to her might be dangerous. But something in her wouldn’t be satisfied unless she knew, and God knew she wouldn’t get answers from anyone in this house.

She opened the door of her room carefully, only to just about trip over a bowl of soup and chunk of bread that someone had left on a tray outside her door, alongside a cup of tea that must have been hot at one point but had probably long since cooled to room temperature. Something painful pulled at her heart. She ignored it and crept carefully downstairs and toward the kitchen door.

Nobody stopped her—apparently whatever the men were arguing about had kept them distracted—and, emboldened, she made her way across the kitchen garden toward the stables. Gringalet was clearly irritable at being roused from his slumber, but he was a good-natured horse and after a few soothing words and pats to his nose was willing to let Nile saddle him up.

It wasn’t easy to see the woman now—Luna had stood out against the gravel, but she blended into the darkness of the night, and only the white of the woman’s dress, a pale blotch against the shadowed landscape of the moors, let Nile know which direction to direct Gringalet.

His hooves seemed unbearably loud against the gravel, and she turned to the house to see if she was being pursued, but she wasn’t, and as they reached the edge of the road and stepped off into the grass to follow the woman, the pound of his footfalls was muffled somewhat, and Nile’s fears eased. She fell into the comfortable rhythm of his gait, always keeping her eyes on her target.

The woman didn’t seem to have any particular goals, or to be in any hurry. She was simply…riding, it seemed, occasionally pausing to look at the moon or to the ground at her side. There was no real place to hide on the open plain, so Nile kept her distance, not wanting the woman to catch her and Gringalet following her, but the woman didn’t seem to notice her, continuing her aimless ride.

As she mounted a hill, her silhouette stood out against the thin light of the moon, and Nile was struck by the eeriness of her outline—a black form against the silver of the moon and the dim of the night, a mystery in human form. And then the woman rode down the hill, and Nile was startled out of her reverie. Urging Gringalet on, she went up the hill, undoubtedly with less skill and speed than the woman had, then paused on the top to track the object of her chase.

From this height, she could see that the woman was not alone—a huge dog ran alongside her horse, and every now and then she would turn to the creature and laugh. But no, thought Nile, of course it wasn’t a dog. It was a wolf. Because that was the kind of bizarre dream world in which she lived, now, in which ghost women rode across the moors at night with wolves by their side.

It was tricky to keep her distance as gravity pulled her and Gringalet down the hill. She went as carefully and slowly as she could, trying to keep quiet. There was absolutely nothing keeping the woman from seeing her if she turned around, so all Nile could hope to do was be quiet and try not to attract her attention. But apparently the woman was too occupied by her own thoughts, because Nile managed to descend the hill without being spotted.

Despite the strangeness of it all, and the anxiety about being caught, and the fear of what she might learn about this woman—what she might learn about _Andy_ , and Booker, and Nicky and Joe—the ride wasn’t unpleasant. The night was cool and moist, the night sky misty but in a way that softened the stars rather than hiding them entirely. The breeze on Nile’s face was soothing, and it felt good to stretch her muscles after her uncomfortable evening huddled against the headboard on her bed. In a moment, it struck her what this reminded her of—those free, aimless, joyous rides she took with Andy.

Nile couldn’t think too closely about that.

She was just coming to wonder whether the woman had any end goal, or whether she would simply ride on forever until she vanished into the horizon like a mysterious hero in a novel, when she suddenly pulled Luna up short and stopped.

Surprised, Nile pulled at Gringalet’s reins and urged him to stop. He stamped his feet a little in protest but stopped, and they sat there and waited for the woman to choose her next direction.

The wolf yipped, and Nile froze, readying herself to turn Gringalet and run if she had to—back to the house, to the road, to Riverside, wherever.

Sighing, the woman turned around, and the blood froze in Nile’s veins as she looked directly at Nile. “Well?” she said. “I hear you want to meet me—are you just going to hang back like that all night?”

“I—” Nile had the absurd urge to point to herself and clarify that it was her, Nile Freeman, the woman was talking to.

“Come on,” the woman said. “I don’t bite. I suppose Andy will be angry, since you and I were not supposed to meet yet, but frankly I think Andy’s being a bit ridiculous about it all, don’t you?” She looked down at the wolf at her side and said, “Don’t you growl at me, you know it’s true.”

Nile had absolutely no idea what to say to that. The wolf, however, seemed to be getting impatient at her stillness—or perhaps what the woman had said to it had angered it--and it turned and loped toward Nile and Gringalet, its tongue lolling out of its huge, sharp-toothed mouth.

Gringalet was typically a very calm horse, but he did _not_ care for a wolf running in his direction, and he backed up, rearing slightly on his hind legs and making an alarmed-sounding protest. Nile, who was having a hard time making either her mind or her limbs do much of anything, slid from his back and on to the ground.

“Oh!” the woman exclaimed. “No, Andy! Nile, are you all right?” She slid easily from Luna and began to stride in Nile’s direction. But Nile, who, between the strange woman approaching her and the _wolf_ approaching her, had reached the end of her adventurous spirit, picked herself up and ran in the direction she thought she remembered the road being.

“No, not that way!” the woman’s voice called out again, sharper this time, but Nile ignored it, focusing on the motion of her legs and the air pushing in and out of her lungs and the swing of her arms at her side. She wasn’t in her best fighting form, but she’d been doing hard physical labor for over a month now and weapons training multiple times a week for a few weeks, and she knew that if she tried hard enough, she could lose this woman in the dark of the moors at night. What happened after that, she didn’t know, but she was damned if it all ended here, killed by a wolf and a ghost and—

“ _No!_ ” the woman shouted. “No, no, stop!”

But it was too late. The patch of grass that Nile had just stepped on _sunk_ , as if she’d stepped on an especially squishy feather pillow. Some distant part of her hindbrain screamed _danger_ , _move!_ , and she tried to step back, but her leg sunk through the grass and into the thick muck beneath it, and the muck clung to her, not wanting to let her go. She pulled at it, but this only threw her off balance, and as she leaned more heavily on her free leg, it, too, began to sink into the earth below her.

She scarcely had the time or wherewithal to register her terror before her whole body was being pulled down, down into the clinging, fetid embrace of the bog she had stepped in.


	6. Chapter 6

After that, she was only dimly sensible of what was going on, awareness coming to her in only flashes between stretches of unconsciousness and panic so all-consuming that it might as well have been unconsciousness. A painful tugging on something tied around her waist. Being held against another woman’s body as a horse’s hooves pounded against the earth. The voices of Booker, Joe, and Nicky, fearful and determined, and the strange woman’s voice among the chorus, in a calm voice with a current of fright underneath. Hot water, so hot against her cold body that she struggled against it, and a soothing voice in her ear, “Hush, hush, my dear, believe me when I tell you you will want to be clean and warm.”

When Nile’s awareness fully returned to her, she was in her bed, with the covers folded over her chest. Someone had put her into her nightgown. The gas lamp in the wall sconce was lit, and Nicky, Joe, and Booker were sitting around the bed in chairs that they must have dragged into the room from somewhere else.

Her eyes met Joe’s, and he leaned forward onto the bed to clasp her hands in a firm grip. “ _Nile_ ,” he said, and his voice was thick with tears or anger, Nile couldn’t tell. Maybe both, she thought as he went on. “Nile, my God, what were you _thinking_?”

Her own anger rose to meet his as the fuzziness cleared from her mind, and she tried to pull her hands from his. “I was _thinking_ ,” she said as he let her hands go, “that I was never going to get a straight answer out of any of you, so I had to find out about the woman on my own.”

“The woman.” Nicky laughed, but it wasn’t his usual little huff of amusement—this was a bitter, ironic laugh that didn’t suit him at all. “You want to know about this woman? I will tell you one thing about this woman—I will tell you that _she_ knows these lands like the back of her hand and has been riding a horse longer than you have been alive. You want to know more? Maybe we did not tell you about this woman, but do you know what we _did_ tell you? We told you not to ride out at night, in the dark, because the land is treacherous and you might sink into a bog. And you did not listen, and what happened?”

“She sank into a bog,” said Booker obligingly.

“She sank into a bog!” Nicky stood up and paced over to the window. Nile had never seen him so agitated, not even when the window in the library had broken.

Joe looked over to where his husband stood, cloaked in shadows by the dark window, and shook his head. “Well, now you’ve done it, Nile,” he said. “I haven’t seen Nicky so worked up in years.”

As unnerving as their anger was, it was hardly the most unnerving thing that had happened to Nile in the last twenty-four hours. She pulled herself up a little straighter, so she could lean against the headboard. Booker moved to help her prop the pillow underneath her back, and she swatted his hands away. He stepped back, peering at her with a hangdog expression.

“Tell me what happened,” she said. “I mean it—don’t you tell me it’s a secret, or feed me another lie, or as soon as the sun rises I’ll ride home to the city myself and tell anyone who asks that Scythian Woods is a den of liars and thieves and maybe murderers.” It seemed absurd to throw around threats from her bed, in her nightgown, but Nile had had too long and frightening a day to care.

“Murderers? That’s a bit dramatic, don’t you think?” asked Joe. She gave him a hard look, and he sighed. “What is it, exactly, that you want to know?”

“ _Everything_ ,” Nile insisted. “Who is that woman? Is she alive or not? How do you know her? Why does she have a pet wolf? How did I get back here from the bog?”

“Ah. Um.” Joe looked overwhelmed. Booker’s eyes darted from Joe to Nicky and back again, and Nicky heaved a heavy sigh.

“Boys, I believe the jig is up.” All four of them looked toward the door, where the strange woman stood leaning against the doorframe. She pushed herself off from it and strode over to Nile’s bedside, where she paused and gave all of them a fond smile. “I would have liked it to be under other circumstances,” she said, “but still I am happy to meet you, Nile. My name is Quỳnh.”

Nile stared at her, taken aback. But then again, perhaps it wasn’t so surprising at all. “Nice to meet you, Quỳnh.”

Five minutes later, all five of them were sitting around the kitchen table, where Nicky made them all tea and served them biscuits with jam. Nile, who hadn’t eaten supper, found herself ravenously hungry, and Nicky looked sharply at her and began busying himself warming leftover soup on the stove. Despite her hunger, Nile couldn’t focus on food at the moment.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “Aren’t you supposed to be dead?”

Quỳnh’s mouth quirked up into an odd, not-entirely-happy smile. “Aren’t _you_?”

Nile frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Shaking her head, Quỳnh said to Joe, “I don’t know how Andromache thought this secrecy business was _ever_ going to work with one of our own.” She pushed away from the table and nudged Nicky aside to grab something from the counter.

As she turned back around, Nile startled to realize that it was one of Nicky’s kitchen knives, the sharp one he used to chop meat. Quỳnh stepped closer to the table again, and Nile jumped up, readying herself for a fight, but Booker reached out a hand, gripping her arm gently. “Don’t be afraid,” he said.

“Look, Nile,” said Quỳnh, and before Nile could stop her, she pressed the knife into her own hand, opening a deep gash in her palm. Blood dripped hot and red from the wound, making little blots on the skirt of Quỳnh’s white dress.

“Oh, God,” cried Nile, wondering why no one had stopped her, why she was the only one reaching for a napkin to stop the bleeding. She jumped up, ready to tear a strip from her own clean dress as a bandage if it was needed. “Why—” But before she could even finish the question, Quỳnh held up her cut hand to Nile, wiping the blood away with her good hand to reveal…no wound at all. Her hand was completely whole.

“You see, Nile?” asked Quỳnh. Nile couldn’t say anything at all, only stare, wondering if ghosts could bleed. Quỳnh rolled her eyes impatiently. “Nicolò,” she said, and Nicky turned from where he’d been stirring the soup.

“Hmm?” he said, and then he looked from Quỳnh’s hand to Nile’s face. “Ah. I see we are demonstrating certain things.” He took the knife from Quỳnh and, to Nile’s horror, cut his own hand and walked over to Nile. “Look,” he said, offering his hand. She watched as the cut in his hand went from an open wound to a thin line like a scar and then vanished entirely, and she wondered if she had, in fact, ever woken up that morning or if all of this, Quỳnh and the bog and whatever the hell this was, was all a dream.

Frowning, Joe took Nicky’s hand in his own and wiped the blood from it with a napkin. “That will stain,” Nicky murmured.

Joe gave him an unamused look and said, “You and I both know how to get bloodstains out, my darling.” To Nile, he said, “I apologize for the…violence of the demonstration, but sometimes it’s better to be direct, no?”

“Direct about _what_?” asked Nile.

“Nile.” Quỳnh sat in the chair next to Nile and gripped both her hands, staring into Nile’s eyes. Despite the intensity, there was a warmth to her gaze, and Nile thought of the portrait in the library, and the love in her eyes in the painting as she stood next to Andy.

“What?” she asked, her voice sounding small to her own ears.

“Have you not done strange things in the past months? Did you not fix a broken window and a horse’s leg? Did you not wake up in a hospital after having your throat slit? Did you not suspect that these things were connected?” She leaned in even closer. Her hands were warm around Nile’s. “It’s _magic_ , Nile. _You_ are magic.”

At this, Nile pulled back. “That’s ridiculous. Magic doesn’t _exist_ anymore. It hasn’t for a long time.”

“That’s…not entirely true,” said Booker, staring at the ceiling. His Adam’s apple moved as he swallowed, and he lowered his gaze to look at Nile. “I mean, people still practice magic—out of books, you know, they try to recreate it with spells, but even if they didn’t....” He looked at Quỳnh.

“Nile,” she said, “how long do you think we have lived at Scythian Woods?”

She thought about it. The timeline still didn’t line up in her mind, exactly, but she could make a reasonable guess. “Ten years?”

Quỳnh smiled thinly. “Almost forty.”

“I don’t…” Nile frowned and tried to shift a few things around in her mind. “You…came here when you were a baby, or a little child? And hired Joe and Nicky and Booker later?”

“No,” said Booker with a laugh. “We’ve _all_ been here almost forty years. And we weren’t babies when we came, either.”

“We’re making a bit of a mess of this,” said Joe. “Nile, let me put it this way. You remember the books that Nicky and I gave each other for our fifth anniversary?”

Confused at the change of subject, Nile could only nod.

“Those books are over nine hundred years old.” Joe looked over at Nicky, then returned his gaze to Nile. “We made those books for each other. I was thirty-eight at the time, and Nicky was thirty-five. And now we’re nine hundred and fifty-five and nine hundred and fifty-two years old, and we’ve looked exactly like this the entire time.”

“I’m, what, two hundred and fifty? Two hundred and fifty-one? Something like that,” said Booker, scratching the back of his head.

“And I am older than all three of them put together,” said Quỳnh. “And so is Andy.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Nile objected. “Nobody’s that old.”

“And yet we are.” Quỳnh didn’t sound like she was joking, or like she had lost touch with reality—she sounded as if she was simply stating facts, and Nile let the idea of it sink in a bit. _Hundreds_ of years old. _Thousands_ of years old. It didn’t sound even remotely possible, but then, what _wasn’t_ strange about Scythian Woods?

Quỳnh smiled at her and continued. “We have lived this long because we have magic within us. Many people who were not born with this gift think that one may use magic to find eternal life. They are only half-right. We do not _use_ magic. We _are_ magic—we see the lines of power that hold the world together, things that are invisible to most people, and we can shape them according to our own particular gifts. We don’t know exactly the nature of _your_ gift, Nile, but we are so happy to have found another like us, and we will help you learn about your own magic as best we can.”

“Wait.” Nile could scarcely wrap her mind around all this. “You’re telling me—what, I can’t _die_ , because I’m _magic_?”

“Oh, you can die,” said Booker. “We all have. Many times. We just don’t _stay_ dead. That’s how we knew about you, by the way.”

“What?” Nile felt unbearably slow.

Nicky sat down and pushed a bowl of soup in Nile’s direction, a spoon sticking out of it and steam rising from its golden surface. Quỳnh, who still had Nile’s hands held tightly in her own, let them go so that she could grasp the spoon.

She sipped the savory broth slowly—her belly felt horribly empty, but she knew from experience that eating too fast on an empty stomach usually ended badly. When she had taken a few bites of the soup, Nicky said, “We knew about what happened to you before you told Andy. About…” He lightly touched his own neck at the place where Nile had been wounded all those months ago. “We knew, because when one of us dies for the first time, we dream of it. As you probably dreamt of us, until we met. Did you not?”

Nile cast her mind back to the strange dreams she’d had in the hospitals, snippets of conversations between people she didn’t know, glimpses of strangers that she now realized had been the inhabitants of Scythian Woods, and she nodded. Then the significance of his words caught up to her, and her breath caught in her throat. “You mean I _died_? Like, I actually _died_ when that man cut my throat?”

“You did,” said Quỳnh. “But you won’t again, not _really_ , until the magic leaves you.”

“It can do that?” The concept of magic as something real and currently happening to _her_ had barely registered, and it already had a time limit?

Quỳnh smiled, but it wasn’t a happy expression. “It can and it will,” she said. “There were many of us, once, back when magic was a commonplace thing that everyone knew about. Some lived normal human lifespans, and some were like us, but all of them are gone now. Only we remain.” Then she brightened, her smile turning more genuine. “But this will not happen to _you_ for a long time, and we will have plenty of time to learn about your gifts.”

“You don’t already know?”

Jos shrugged. “We can make an educated guess. You seem to fix things—take bones and plants and pipes that were broken and put them right. But everybody has their own, I don’t know, I guess you could call them _patterns_ in the magic that we see, and they show up in different ways for each of us. Let me—” He rummaged around in his pocket to pull out a sketchbook, a smaller one than the one Nile had looked at before. “Let me show you,” he said, and he flipped the book open and slid it over the table to her.

Nile lay a hand on the book to keep it open and glanced over the picture, taking it in. It was her, but not her at Scythian Woods—her at her mother’s house, with her mother sitting next to her in the parlor, serving James Copley tea. She raised her eyes to Joe, not entirely sure what she was looking at.

He nodded toward the drawing. “I drew that about a week before we met. That’s how magic works for me—I see things that’ll happen in the future, and if I draw them out before I lose them, sometimes they’re useful.”

“Joe.” She stroked a finger over her mother’s face on the page, careful not to smear the pencil. “That’s amazing,” she breathed, and he smiled as modestly as he had the first time she’d complimented his drawings.

“It’s not always as helpful as you’d think,” he said. “The magic doesn’t give me days or times, and it can be hard to pinpoint location, so…you know, we take our best guess.”

Nile nodded, thinking of the book of magic with its complex diagrams that was probably still sitting on her nightstand. It occurred to her now that at least some of the annotations—the ones with little drawings, at least—had been in Joe’s hand. It made sense to her, now, that magic was less about waving a wand and more about finding…points of convergence, maybe, and trying to find meaning in them.

She turned to Nicky. “I think I can guess what your gift is.”

He smiled his little quirk of a smile. “I haven’t really tried to hide it.”

“No, but you knew that when you said things like ‘this tea will help you sleep’ and ‘this omelet will give you energy,’ I wasn’t going to think you meant there was _magic_ in them.”

“Perhaps not,” he said with a shrug. “There is a bit more to it, of course.”

“Like what?” she asked curiously.

“Let me, ah…” He got up, and returned with a little tin container. “I make this tea myself,” he explained, spooning a bit into a teacup before pouring hot water over it. “Although I suppose it is not really a tea, it is a tisane of different herbs.” He pushed the tea over to Nile, and said, “Is there something in your life that you would like to remember but don’t? A fond memory from your childhood, perhaps, or the location of something you have lost?”

She thought about it. “I don’t know,” she said. “My father died when I was young. I’d like to remember more about him.”

“Anything specific?” She opened her mouth, but he continued before she could. “You don’t need to tell me,” he said. “Just think of a specific time or thing that you would like to remember clearly, but don’t, and take a sip of this.”

Nile tried to remember when she was a little girl, to think about what she actually remembered about her father and what she’d only reconstructed from what she’d been told about him. She remembered him kissing her mother when he came home from a stint on his ship; she remembered sitting in his lap as he read stories to her; she remembered…well, she didn’t _remember_ her fourth birthday party, at which she’d apparently wanted her father to be present so badly that she’d put it in every letter her mother wrote on her behalf for months. He’d been on his ship at the time, uncertain if he could get leave, and so he and Nile’s mother had never promised he anything, but apparently he’d been able to swing it at the last minute. Nile’s mother told her that she’d never seen a child as happy as her when, mid-way through eating the cake, she’d looked up to see her father walking through the door.

She met Nicky’s steady gaze, and took a sip of the tea.

“Close your eyes and remember,” he said, and she did. She didn’t know how one just ‘remembered’ on cue like this, but as she closed her eyes, she saw in her mind’s eye the table before her—the cake, frosted with red and yellow icing—her brother, still a baby, swinging around with his fists, sticky with icing—and the door opening, and her father’s beloved face smiling, his voice saying, “I heard it was someone’s birthday….”

She opened her eyes and blinked tears from them. “You…did you see what I remembered?”

He shook his head. “No. The memory comes from you, not from me. I only see the…the _node_ , maybe, of the magic that can make it happen, and I can make it into food or drink.”

“God,” she breathed. “Thank you, Nicky.”

“You’re welcome, Nile.” He smiled at her. “Always.”

Booker reached across the table and took a sip of Nile’s tea. “Hmm,” he said. “Just remembered where I left my copy of _Pantagruel_. Thanks for that, Nicky.” He grinned at Nile. “I’ll bet you anything you can’t guess what my gift is.”

“No, but I’m guessing from that smirk that you’re about to tell me.”

He reached over and ran a finger behind her ear. “You should clean back there better,” he said, producing a coin.

She groaned. “Oh, come _on_. That’s not magic, that’s some dumb trick you’d do at a kid’s party. What are you gonna do next, pull a rabbit out of a hat?”

“Nah,” he said. “I can’t do living things. But these?” He held the coin between his fingers and studied it for a moment before setting it down on the table. He made a motion with his now-free hand like he was molding something, pinching the air, and suddenly there was a second coin sitting beside the first. He repeated the motion, and then there was a third coin.

Nile squinted at him. “Do you…have those up your sleeve or something?”

“I made them,” he said. “They didn’t exist a minute ago, and in an hour they won’t exist anymore.” He shrugged. “Like the man in the fairy tale who could spin gold out of straw, I can spin— _stuff_ out of thin air. Copies, really. They’re not permanent, but they look good. It’s useful at parties, if you don’t have enough cups for everyone. Or, ah, if you want the money from selling something, but you don’t actually want to lose it.”

“So…stealing, then,” Nile pointed out. She reached out to touch the coins—coin _copies_ —Booker had made. They certainly _felt_ like real coins.

“I didn’t say it was a _moral_ thing to do. I said it was _useful._ ” He tapped his finger against one of the coins. “Sometimes you need money, for example. And you don’t have it. It’s good to be able to make it.”

Nile wasn’t touching that one. She had too much else to think about without wondering whether Booker regularly cheated people by giving them fake magic money. She turned to Quỳnh, who had been quiet during the little magic demonstrations, gazing at the men with affectionate pride. “But none of this answers my original question,” she said. “If you’re actually alive—and you’ve _been_ alive for thousands of years, and you’re _going_ to keep on living until your magic runs out, then why is everyone pretending you’re dead?”

The softness in Quỳnh’s expression melted away, and for a moment she looked dreadfully fierce, but then she smoothed out her expression to a calm one. “Now _that_ , Nile,” she said, “is a question with a long and unpleasant answer.”

She would have asked what that meant, but there was suddenly a scratching sound at the door, and she twitched in surprise.

Quỳnh smiled. “Ah,” she said. “My beloved is here.”

By this point, Nile had thought there was nothing that could shock her. And yet, she hadn’t really expected Quỳnh to go to the kitchen door and let the large gray wolf in.

Nile stiffened; after the revelations of the last few hours, she had become accustomed enough to the strange and unexpected to hold in her scream, but the sight of such a huge wild animal sitting on the doorstep was still a dreadful shock. Booker, Joe, and Nicky looked at the wolf cautiously but without surprise or fear, so she supposed this was…expected? Did they have familiars, as magicians, and this was Quỳnh’s?

As if blissfully unaware of Nile’s questions, Quỳnh was smiling broadly and scratching behind the wolf’s ears like it was a giant puppy. The wolf closed its eyes, apparently basking in the attention, and wagged its tail. So perhaps the puppy comparison wasn’t too far off.

When Quỳnh finally looked up at Nile, her smile had faded. “The sun is about to come up,” she said, her voice sounding distant.

Nile looked out the window. It still looked like night out there to her. “How can you tell?’

Quỳnh stood slowly, for once looking like the ancient woman she claimed to be. _Thousands of years old._ “I can always tell,” she said, her expression sad. “Goodbye for now, Nile. It was lovely to meet you. Brothers, take care of her.”

“Of course,” said Joe solemnly. “See you tonight?”

“Perhaps so.” She strode out of the room with a manner reminiscent of Andy’s, a confidence that no one would dare to stop her. The wolf followed on her trail like a loyal hound, and in a moment both had vanished down the hall.

“What the _hell_?” Nile asked once they had gone.

The question encompassed everything—the magic, the fact or the fiction of Quỳnh’s death, the wolf, their sweeping out of the room like Cinderella before the clock struck midnight. It was only the last one that Booker seemed to hear when he said, “We try to give them privacy around this time of day. We know it’s painful for them.”

“ _What_ is painful for them? And don’t you even think of telling me that this is a secret and Andy told you not to tell me,” she said before any of them could offer such an excuse. “What secret could possibly be bigger than the fact that _magic_ still exists and I have it?”

She did, in fact, have a couple of possible answers to this question. But they all involved cruelty on Andy’s part—using magic to trap Quỳnh here, threatening her so that Quỳnh stayed away during the day and needed the wolf to protect her--and so she refused to truly even consider them, not until she got the truth.

After a long pause, Nicky stood up. “Well, you are right, Nile, you should know, but if we are telling _this_ story, I will need some coffee.”

“For me, too, please,” said Joe hopefully, and Nicky smiled at him.

“For everybody. We will need energy for this.” His eyes flicked over to Nile, and he said, “I think you will, too.”

Nile took his word for it, and gladly accepted the coffee, sweetened with cream and honey, when he offered it. Knowing about his gift as she did now, she knew the sudden feeling of well-being and safety and alertness for what it was when she sipped it, and she wondered just how far that gift went—if he could make someone believe something false, for example, or brew love potions like a witch in a story.

When they’d all drunk some coffee and eaten some bread and butter, Joe sighed and said, “All right, here goes. Andy and Quỳnh’s gift is…a little different from ours.”

“Different how?” asked Nile.

“Powerful,” Booker said. “Unbelievably powerful. But they can only use it when they’re together. The rest of us have our own gifts, but they share one.”

Nile digested that. She’d never seen Andy and Quỳnh in the same place at the same time—for obvious reasons, as Quỳnh had faked her own death. Was it because of their magic? “What _is_ their gift?”

Nicky pursed his lips thoughtfully. “It is a kind of control over life and death,” he said. “They have the power to bring the dead back to life, and to kill the living with a thought. As Booker said, it is a tremendously powerful gift.”

That was one way of putting it. It sounded like a practically godlike power, the sort of power that no human being should have. Some of her horror must have shown on her face, because Joe gave her a reassuring smile and said, “That was exactly our reaction when we found out about it. But you have to understand, they hardly ever _use_ their gift. I’m almost a thousand years old, and I’ve only seen them use it a handful of times.”

“One of those times,” said Nicky, “it caused an earthquake. Another time bringing someone back to life killed half a dozen bystanders.” He looked solemnly at Nile. “You are right to think of it with fear. It is a gift with the potential to throw all of the magical and natural forces that make up our powers and our lives utterly out of balance. Andy and Quỳnh know this, and so they are exceedingly cautious about it.”

“Is that why Quỳnh pretended to be dead?” she asked. “So that she and Andy would be separate, and they wouldn’t, I don’t know, accidentally kill someone?”

Joe winced. “I think you’re laboring under a misapprehension. They _are_ separated because of their gift, but not of their own free will.”

“It’s like this, Nile,” said Nicky. “The world has changed when it comes to magic. There was a time, not even so long ago, when there were more of us, and when it was understood that magic was a force that came naturally to choose its bearers. Joe and I were on opposite sides of a war—we _killed_ each other—and yet when we arose, both of our sides understood that the forces drawing us together were larger than the hostility between us, and so they let us go. But now there are few of us, and when people believe that magic even exists, they look upon it as something to use. To exploit.

“When we came to rent this house, decades ago, we pretended that Andy and Quỳnh were the ladies of the house and that we were their staff, because the truth—that we are a family of magicians who were drawn together by our dreams—was no longer something that people would recognize. We had only intended to stay until we could upset the power of the local landlord, who was exploiting and abusing the tenants terribly. That’s how we’ve spent our days, by the way—traveling, trying to find ways to use our magic to do good how and when we can.”

That didn’t sound so bad to Nile. It didn’t sound so different from the desires that had brought her to Scythian Woods. But then, she supposed, that was no coincidence.

“To be fair,” said Booker, “sometimes we use our _weapons_ to do good, too. Or our best approximation of it.”

“Immortal…magician…warriors?” Nile said skeptically.

“We’re also not bad at managing a country house,” Joe said with a wink.

Nicky shrugged. “We use the tools that are at hand. Sometimes this is drawing the future, and sometimes this is making soup, and sometimes this is the sword.”

Joe squeezed Nicky’s hand, and he fell silent, looking at Joe, his gaze heavy with the weight of, apparently, _hundreds_ of years of love. Joe smiled at him, and said to Nile, “Anyway, that’s how we came to Scythian Woods. And that’s how all this started. Do you know the name Henry Merrick?”

Nile blinked, not having expected the question. “Um. The famous industrialist?”

“That’s the one,” muttered Booker, sounding somewhere between ironic and angry.

“I wouldn’t say I know the man, then,” said Nile, “but of course I know _of_ him. He spent a few days on my ship last year, demonstrating one of his miracle ointments.” Her eyes widened. “Is _he_ a magician? Does he make potions like you, Nicky?”

Nicky made a face like he’d tasted something disgusting. “Oh, Nile. He is not a magician, not truly, and I beg you not to compare the two of us.”

“I understand why you’d think that, though,” said Joe, who was still holding Nicky’s hand and ran a calming thumb across his knuckles. “Because he _has_ been using magic. His true name is Stephen, but I gather that these days he’s going around pretending to be his own son, or grandson, or some such. He’s had an interest in magic for a long time, and when he heard of Andy and Quỳnh’s gift, he thought that he might be able to, ah. Use it for medicinal purposes.”

“That sounds…nice?” Nile tried. Henry Merrick had seemed rather smug to her, but there was no denying that his miracle ointments had helped many people. In the end, that was probably more important than being a pleasant person.

“Not really,” said Booker flatly.

Joe shot him an unimpressed look, and Nile said, “Wait, if you were pretending _not_ to be magicians, how did he find out about Andy and Quỳnh’s gift?”

“That is a very good question, isn’t it, Sébastien?” asked Nicky.

Booker looked at the table, his general sadness more visible than usual. Without looking up, he said, “He found out through me. I told James Copley, and James Copley told Merrick.”

“James _Copley_?” Nile had more or less forgotten about the man, but now she supposed that he must have known about the magic—the magic of those at Scythian Woods and probably also _her_ magic—before he’d ever come to her mother’s house. “Why would you tell him anything about your magic, or Andy and Quỳnh’s?”

He looked up and heaved a sigh. “Nile. Magic cannot be passed down along family lines. And I have no power to heal. My sons….” He looked away, but Nile could see the sheen of tears in his eyes. “They died young. Of sicknesses for which there are still treatments but no cures. I’m two and a half centuries old, and my youngest boy died at forty-two, after I had already buried his brothers. I begged Andy and Quỳnh to bring them back—I screamed, I coaxed, I offered them anything they wanted, but they told me it could not be done, and I….” He shook his head. “I was bitter, for a time.”

“Oh,” said Nile. “Oh, _Booker_.”

He took another sip of coffee with trembling hands before setting the cup down again. “Mr. Copley knew this pain, too—his wife died of illness. We had worked together before, and when he told me that Merrick wanted to make use of magic to cure disease, I…I believed him. I thought that, even if they couldn’t make good use of Andy and Quỳnh’s gift to heal others, that maybe through understanding the ways that our power worked he might tap into my own gift and make better use of it than I had. I trusted in Merrick’s good will.”

“A mistake that we are still paying for,” said Joe, though he sounded more tired than angry. “He’s not interested in curing anybody— _he_ wanted to be the one controlling the power of life and death. He came to a party that Andy and Quỳnh hosted at Scythian Woods to, ah, get the lay of the land, so to speak. We didn’t think much of it at the time. But he came back a week later, when Nicky and I were out. We came back to find the house a wreck, Andy lying on the library floor in a rage, Booker unconscious, and Quỳnh gone.”

Booker brushed his hand over his mouth, looking sick, and Nile decided not to ask just how he’d been rendered unconscious.

“He’d come back with men to ambush them, and some—some false magician who worked for him lay a curse on them,” Joe continued, not looking at Booker in a manner that struck Nile as deliberate.

“A false magician?” she interrupted. “What do you mean?”

Nicky made a thoughtful face and spoke slowly, as if he were choosing his words carefully. “We have told you that magic for us is about seeing patterns and making use of them, yes?” At Nile’s nod he continued. “You do not need to be born with magic or to see these patterns to manipulate them, necessarily. Over the years scholars and scientists and charlatans have developed other ways to do this, what you might call spells—rites that one might practice in order to perform magic without being able to see or touch it.”

“Merrick’s magician—Kozak, her name was—fancied herself a scientist,” Joe said, picking up the story again. “A real innovator when it came to spells. And the one she lay on Andy and Quỳnh—” He shook his head. “It’s like a snarled knot of magic that’s caused us nothing but problems for decades now. This house and land aren’t falling apart because the land’s inherently infertile or because the house is old, they’re falling apart because Kozak’s spell drains energy from them to give Merrick perpetual youth.”

Nile thought of the sinking feeling she had whenever she stepped into the house, that cold drip down her spine of _wrongness_ , and with the realization of what that feeling meant, she let out an “Oh, _no._ ”

Joe nodded. “But that’s not all of it. Andy and Quỳnh are trapped on the estate. Their magic is tied to whatever it is that drains its energy—their magic is what _powers_ it. Every time they get too far away from the house, they run up against—well, it’s not quite like a barrier. They tell us it’s like pulling too hard on a rope tied around them, and if they try to keep going, it pulls them back.”

“That explains why Andy’s got a reputation as a recluse,” said Nile, and Nicky nodded.

“But even that is not the worst of it. Andy and Quỳnh may only use their power if they are together, and if they were to use that power, I believe that they would be able to break this spell of Kozak’s. And so she ensured that they would never be able to.” His eyes turned sorrowful, and Nile felt grief squeeze at her heart. It might have been Nicky’s, but then again, it might have been hers, because somehow she knew what he was about to say before he said it. “You have seen the raven who visits us daily. It is no ordinary bird—it is Quỳnh. At night, the spell returns her to her human form, and Andy becomes the wolf that came to our door just now. They are forever together, trapped in this house, but never _truly_ together, as the spell ensures that they are never human at the same time for more than a second or two at sunrise and sunset. They cannot speak to each other, or touch each other, except when one is an animal who cannot understand.”

“Oh, God,” Nile whispered, thinking of how agonizing that must be, to know that the woman you loved was within reach but never truly able to _be_ with you. No wonder Andy was so angry. No wonder Quỳnh spent her nights riding the moors with the wolf at her side, trying to be with Andy the only way that she could.

“And so now you know it all,” said Booker. “The haunting of Scythian Woods.” He leaned back in his chair, covering his melancholy with a resigned little smile.

Joe smiled sadly. “We’ve tried all we can to break the spell ourselves,” he said, “but no dice, I’m afraid. And so we stay and take care of the house and try to make sure that Quỳnh isn’t alone at night. And thank God we do, because this house is a death trap, and Quỳnh has a great many gifts, but repairing leaky roofs alone in the dark is not one of them.”

“I don’t think God has much to do with it,” said a voice from the doorway, and they all turned in surprise to see Andy, looking exhausted. “I don’t thank _God_ for your presence here, Joe. I thank _you_.”

Nicky rose to his feet and went back over to the stove. “Coffee?” he asked.

“Please,” said Andy, blinking tiredly.

“Sit down before you fall down, Andy,” Booker said, pulling out a chair for her, and she sank into it with a sigh.

Looking around the table at Booker, Joe, and Nile, she said, “I suspect that I missed quite a story tonight.”

Joe smiled at her. “You could say that.” He studied Andy’s face for a moment, and they seemed to exchange a wordless conversation. Whatever it was they were saying, he nodded and stood. But then, Joe could see things other people couldn’t, after all—of course he could see what Andy wanted without words. “Sweetheart,” he said to Nicky, “are you finished with the coffee?”

“Hmm?” asked Nicky. “Oh, yes.”

“All right then. Booker, Nicky, I think after all the chaos last night, we’re going to need to give Luna and Gringalet more attention than they’ve gotten. We’re needed in the stables. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Ah,” said Booker. “Of course.”

Nicky wiped his hands on a towel, handed Andy a cup of coffee, and went to open the door to the kitchen garden for the other two.

Once the men had gone, Andy sipped her coffee, eyes closed. “I’m guessing you know it all, now,” she said. “I was trying to keep from dragging you down into our mess. A fat lot of good that did.”

Over the course of the evening, with each successive revelation, Nile’s anger had felt farther and farther away, but at Andy’s words, she felt it well up in her again, hot and bitter. “Dragging me down into your mess?” she asked. “I’m already _in_ it. If everything they told me about magic bringing us together is true, I was _always_ going to be in it. And not only did you lie to me, but you made _them_ lie to me, too—you made me think I was going mad, imagining Quỳnh or seeing ghosts or something. And don’t mistake me, I’m angry at Booker, Joe, and Nicky, too, but _you_. What the hell were you thinking, Andy?”

Andy opened her eyes, staring at Nile with that clear gray gaze that always felt like it was pinning her in place. “I was thinking that that there’s no spell keeping Booker, Joe, and Nicky here, and yet they’ve been stuck in this cesspit of a house as surely as Quỳnh and I have for almost forty years. They’re good men, and we love them, and yet we’ve put them in a cage as surely as Merrick and Kozak put Quỳnh and me in one.”

The anger within Nile began to cool at the despair in Andy’s voice. She knew well how Andy took responsibilities on herself, every trial her tenants faced weighing on her. If she’d been blaming herself for the men’s own sense of responsibility, and their loyalty to her and Quỳnh, that was a heavy burden indeed. “Love isn’t a cage, Andy,” she said in a gentler voice.

“Isn’t it?” Andy demanded. “Isn’t it their love that keeps them from leaving, from going off and enjoying their lives? But at least they’ve had lives to enjoy. Nile, I cannot _stand_ the thought of trapping you here. The idea of you stuck at Scythian Woods, wasting your time and your gifts cleaning mildew off the walls, is _bullshit_.”

Nile didn’t know how she’d ever missed the pain underneath Andy’s gruffness. The love. Even as Nile resigned herself to her feelings being forever unrequited, knowing that Andy wasn’t a widow after all, her heart was more and more drawn to the woman. “I’m not _stuck_ here, Andy.” She met Andy’s eyes squarely, no longer afraid of being fired or overstepping her bounds or whatever it was that had held her back before. “I’m here because I’m one of you, remember? I want to know how magic works. I want to know how _my_ magic works. And I want to help you. If we don’t die like normal people, we have time to figure out how to break this spell. And we’re _going_ to.”

After a moment of silence, Andy said, “You sound pretty sure of yourself for someone who’s only been here a month.”

Nile shrugged. “Maybe you’ve been here too long. Maybe you needed someone new to see things from a different perspective. The magic brought us together for a reason, after all.”

The smile hovering around Andy’s lips was a funny one—not happy exactly, but with a surprised kind of joy in its trembling lines. “I’d forgotten what it was like to feel that hopeful about the future,” she said. “Hell, Nile. Maybe you really _will_ break the spell.”

“We will,” said Nile firmly, not letting herself doubt it. “Together.”

“Together,” Andy repeated, taking another sip of her coffee. “Well, why not?”

The sun was glimmering on the horizon, more silver than gold through the layers of cloud, and Joe, Nicky, and Booker were tossing out old straw from the stables when Nile and Andy went out to meet them. Joe looked up from his pitchfork as they approached, a question in his eyes. Though Nile wasn’t sure what he was asking, she smiled at him and said, “Okay, so what do I need to know about using magic?”

The three men looked at each other, and Andy sighed. “Come on, boys,” she said. “We’re not going to cover everything in one day. We just need to start grounding her in the basics.”

“And teach me about breaking curses,” Nile put in.

Booker raised his eyebrows at that. Andy lay a hand on Nile’s shoulder, and she tried not to enjoy the warmth of it too much. “One step at a time, Nile,” she said gently but firmly.

“I think the library,” said Nicky. “And before that, breakfast.”

Though the coffee had kept her awake enough to get through the explanations of magic and the curse, Nile was running on brief patches of unconsciousness rather than any real sleep. She didn’t know how on earth she’d sleep that night, knowing about Quỳnh. “Can you really make food that will give us energy? Not just—how food usually gives people energy, but food that will wake us up?” she asked.

“Of course,” said Nicky, though he followed this up with a severe look and said, “It is no substitute for sleep, however. At some point you ought to take a nap.”

“Now that’s a case of _do as I say, not as I do_ if ever I heard one,” said Joe, amused, and Nicky shot him a dirty look.

“Breakfast. Unless anyone else has any better ideas.”

After a meal of spicy scrambled eggs and peppers that made Nile feel less like she’d been through a laundry press, they moved to the library, where all five of them sat in the library’s armchairs and did their best to avoid the stained and pitted plaster of the ceiling.

“So,” said Nile eagerly. “What have you all tried as far as breaking the curse goes?”

Joe opened his mouth to answer, but Andy cut him off. “Better to ask what we _haven’t_ tried,” she said. “We’ve spent almost forty years throwing everything we could at this goddamned curse. We’ve tackled the magic at the source and tried to untangle it with our own powers—or, the men have anyway, I can’t really do much with mine at the moment. We’ve studied artificial magic and used every curse-breaking spell in the books. We’ve tried using magical objects to boost our power, or weaken Kozak’s spell, or at least try and neutralize it. Personally, I don’t think it can be broken without killing Stephen Merrick, so if it were up to _me_ , I’d say we devote ourselves to finding him, fighting through his army of bodyguards, and cutting off his head. But _you_ are not doing any of that, Nile, because _you’ve_ used your power maybe half a dozen times without even knowing what you were doing, and you are _not_ ready to tackle a curse of this magnitude.”

“I think perhaps we could have worked up to that, Andromache,” said Nicky drily into the ensuing silence.

“You want to kill Merrick?” Nile asked with some dismay. She supposed it made sense, both from an emotional perspective and from a logical one—even if Merrick wasn’t a natural magician, he had to be tangled up in the spell pretty closely if it were giving him eternal life. At the same time, though, Nile didn’t exactly relish the idea of cold-blooded murder.

Andy’s cool expression conceded nothing in the face of Nile’s discomfort. “I think it’s our best bet,” she said levelly.

“The ‘old friend,’” Nile realized. “The one you look for whenever one of you goes to town.”

“It’s one of the last ideas we’ve got,” said Booker with an unhappy twist to his mouth. His eyes looked bleak. “Kozak’s dead, so we can’t get her to remove the curse. Copley tries to make it up to us by tracking Merrick, and every now and then we’ll catch up to him just enough to watch him leave town just as we get there.”

“Sometimes we track him farther away from here,” said Joe. “But, ah. It’s hard to manage, with Andy and Quỳnh alone here, and without all of us working to keep the house up, it tends to be even more of a disaster than usual if even one of us goes away for any length of time.”

Andy shot him an irritated look, the set of her jaw mulish. “We’d manage, you know. It would be _worth_ it if you could bring him back here, and I could see if he’d be so damned smug with my axe in his neck.”

Nile didn’t know what kind of face she made at this, but it must not have been very pleased, because Nicky looked at her and said, “Andy, this is not helping.”

“No,” said Joe. “No, Nile, it’s as Andy said before, if you want to learn how to break curses, you need to know how magic works, and you need to be a lot more comfortable with your own power. Maybe _then_ we can talk about the strategies we’ve tried on Kozak’s spell and what you might do differently.”

As impatient as she was, Nile could see the sense in that, and she sighed. She was being foolish, stumbling into the affairs of people who’d been seeing the future and killing people with their minds before even her grandparents had been born, and assuming that she could fix their problems in a day. What had her mother told her as a child when she’d been frustrated that something didn’t come easily to her? _You have big dreams, baby, but if you want them to come true, you have to be willing to wait for them and work for them._ “All right,” she said. “Where do we start?”

“Well, fortunately,” said Booker with an expansive sweep of his arm, “you just happen to be in quite possibly the most extensive library on magic in the world.”

“Not that great an achievement,” Joe informed Nile, “as there simply aren’t that many libraries on magic these days. That said, it’s a good collection. Not all of them are appropriate for beginners, though. The one you were reading isn’t bad. And there’s one a friend of mine wrote a few hundred years back….” He stood and began rooting through the shelves, pulling out the occasional volume and stacking it on the desk by the window.

Nicky and Andy watched him with amusement, but Nile’s eyes widened as the stack grew. “Um, Joe?” she asked. “Are you sure all of those are in languages I can read?”

He lifted his head from the shelf he was perusing. “Well—they’re all in languages that you _will_ be able to read, how about that?”

Booker snorted out a laugh, but Nile was beginning to feel genuinely intimidated. She liked the idea of reading magic books—at least, she’d been enjoying the one she was reading—but this was beginning to look more like a university course of study on the subject, and she couldn’t imagine herself getting through the stack of books Joe was building _and_ helping keep Scythian Woods afloat _and_ trying to break the curse.

Noticing her distress, Nicky reached out to pat her hand. “It’s all right, Nile,” he said. “You do not need to read all of these books. Some of them were not meant to be read all the way through, anyway. I think the most important point is to learn ways to practice your own magic safely, so that you can learn the feel of it. The more comfortable you are with the ways that _you_ see it and _you_ feel it, the more comfortable you will feel applying the theory to your own experiences.”

“But I don’t have any experiences, really,” she said. “I mean, sure, I guess the window was magic? And Quỳnh mentioned Túča’s leg. But I didn’t know I was doing magic, then. I don’t even really know what I did.”

“Oh, bugger this.” Andy stood up, and for a heart-stopping moment Nile thought that she was giving up on the whole endeavor—Nile, the magic lessons, everything—but instead she said, “Joe, pick two or three books, ones that she can read, and come outside with the rest of us when you’re done.”

“What are we doing outside?” asked Booker.

Andy grinned at him. “You remember the cabin in the woods in ’22?”

He groaned. “Ugh. Sentimental stuff, then.”

“That ‘sentimental stuff’ helped you stop breaking things all the time,” Nicky said. “So I for one am grateful for it.”

“You _would_ be,” Booker muttered.

Nile didn’t really have any idea what they meant by ‘sentimental stuff,’ but she supposed it didn’t matter; at least it sounded like Andy had a plan. The morning was foggy and damp with dew, but Andy instructed Nile to sit in the grass before flinging herself down, apparently not caring that both of their clothes would get wet. She told Booker and Nicky to do whatever the hell they would have been doing anyway, so long as it was outside and not too far away, and as they wandered off to obey, Andy turned to Nile.

“What do you feel right now?”

She shrugged, not sure what kind of answer Andy was looking for. “A little cold. Wet. Kind of overwhelmed.”

“All right,” said Andy. “How about the grass beneath you? Do you feel that?”

Nile focused her attention on her legs, crossed beneath her. “Kind of? Not individual blades of it, but it’s kind of poking through my skirt.”

Andy nodded. “That’s good,” she said. “How about smells? What do you smell?”

Taking in a deep breath and letting it out, Nile thought about it. “The herbs in the kitchen garden,” she said. “Basil, mint, oregano…it’s nice. Horse manure, not so much. There’s a sort of wet dirt smell, I suppose. I smell you.” She looked at Nile.

“Is that good or bad?” Andy asked with a smile.

“It’s…it’s fine.” It was better than fine. Andy had a woody smell. She smelled a little like sweat, but that didn’t bother Nile, because picturing Andy sweating was an unbelievably attractive mental image. _Magic_ , she told herself. _Focus._

“Glad to hear it,” Andy murmured. “All right. Now we take the next step. Close your eyes.” Nile did it, still thinking about Andy’s smell. “Do you know where Booker and Nicky are right now?”

Nile hadn’t been paying overly much attention, but she’d seen them out of the corner of her eye half a minute ago. “Well, Booker’s weeding, and Nicky’s—”

“No,” said Andy. “Don’t tell me. Don’t look, don’t listen. Think about healing Túča’s leg. What did that feel like?”

“I…” She tried to remember. “I was sad, because I knew how much that horse meant to that family. I felt like…like something was out of place, or wrong. Obviously, something was. But then, I, I don’t know, it was like I knew how it was supposed to be, Túča’s leg. I knew how the bone was _supposed_ to fit together, and I could picture what that would look like.”

The sound of hair shifting against hair. With her eyes closed, Nile felt like she was more aware of everything she heard, and she thought Andy was nodding. “Every living thing has a kind of force inside them. Usually multiple forces, all working together. And it sounds like you felt those forces, both how they were, and how they _should_ be.”

“What about the glass?” Nile asked. “Glass isn’t living, is it?”

“No, clever-breeches, it isn’t. But it’s easier to see it in living things, because magic is much stronger in them. That’s all magic really is, when it comes down to it—a kind of life. Now. Think about what it was you were feeling in Túča’s leg. When it felt _right_ , the way it was supposed to be.”

In her mind, Nile thought about the horse’s bone the way she had at the time—like a puzzle, with a missing piece. But that wasn’t quite right. She pictured it again, this time as a sort of light, broken the way that a piece of glass would bend a shaft of light. She imagined moving the two parts of the light together so they lined up perfectly, and sighed in satisfaction. “All right,” she said. “I’m thinking about it.”

“Now think about what that would feel like in a human. Think about how it would be a part of everything—a person’s limbs, and body, and head, traveling throughout them, making them alive. Try to see if you can feel that around you.”

It was a strange idea. Nile tried to wrap her head around it. At first it seemed more like creating an image in her mind than feeling something that was already there. But Andy didn’t press. She let Nile sit there and breathe in and out and think about that beam of light. And then—in her mind’s eye, she thought she could see a shape, a shape like a thousand little beams of light all working in perfect concert, like a dance of stars around a bright core. It wasn’t just any bright core—it was whatever force in the universe made Booker _Booker_ , his magic and his memories and his life, and Nile could feel as his hand reached out to pull a weed, another little beam of light that faltered and faded as he threw it onto a pile of weeds.

Nearer to the kitchen, the little universe that was Nicky was sweeping the path that led from the kitchen garden to the back door, and this time Nile thought she could untangle different threads in the core that made him him. There was a thread that was his magic, which seemed to branch off into the kitchen and the plants in the garden. There was a thread that directed his careful, efficient movements. There was a thread in constant, vibrating motion, his mind generating thoughts. There was a thread that passed through the house and connected him to Joe.

And next to Nile, the brightest little universe of all around, wrapped around a core of infinite age and experience and sadness—Andy, with all the threads that tied her to the world around her. A tangled web of love and protectiveness and grief that bound her to Joe and Nicky and Booker and the tenants on the estate. A bright line, fierce and loving, that sprouted from somewhere deep inside and led from her to Quỳnh, wherever it was she was flying today. And somewhere among the thick tangle of power and emotion and memory that was Andy, there was a dark and twisted cord that bound her to…to something, to someone far away, to the estate, to something ancient and powerful and deep that was Andy’s magic, locked away from her by the curse.

Nile opened her eyes. “I felt it,” she said, and she wanted to be excited about it for Andy’s sake, but instead she felt like she’d seen something too big for her to digest, and she wanted to cry thinking about the curse in Andy like a disease invading her.

Maybe Andy understood at least part of this, because her smile was wistful as she said, “Good, Nile. You’ve taken the first step. Remember how that feels, all right?”

“I will,” said Nile, looking Andy in the eye. _I’m going to save you_. The thought came unbidden to her mind. _I’m going to break the curse._

It was at that moment that Joe burst through the kitchen door. “All right,” he said, “it wasn’t easy, but I _think_ I’ve narrowed it down to the three most essential books for beginners.”

“Beloved,” said Nicky, “I don’t mean to criticize, but you are carrying four books, not three.”

Joe was already moving to sit next to Nile and Andy in the grass. “Oh,” he said over his shoulder as he sat down heavily next to Nile, “this top one isn’t a magic book.” He slid it into Nile’s lap and flipped it open with one finger. “See? It’s our, uh, Merrick scrapbook.”

“Huh.” Sure enough, the book seemed to be filled with newspaper clippings and notes about Merrick’s public appearances, his company, his products, people his miracle cures had healed. She looked up at Joe. “Why are you giving this to me?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “You said you’d met him once—or, seen him at a demonstration, same difference. Maybe you’ll know something that will help us find him, you just don’t know it yet.”

“Good thinking, Joe,” said Andy firmly, standing up to brush grass from her knees. As she strode away, Nile looked at the Merrick scrapbook and frowned. The man had apparently been busy over the years. Busy using up the time he stole from Andy and Quỳnh.

The rest of the day was spent doing small magical exercises and leafing through the books that Joe had picked for her. The diagrams of life forces and shifts in power struck her differently now that she knew they were describing something real, and she was absorbed in her reading until supper.

Despite her weariness, Nile found new energy at supper to tell Andy and the men what she had learned, and she felt a new openness at the table, a lightness—the secrecy had been a burden to all of them, and they were all happy to listen to Nile talk about the books and answer her questions. She wondered if it had been like that before she came, when they hadn’t needed to keep secrets from each other, but somehow she didn’t think it had been. Somehow she felt like she was needed here.

When the sun began to hover, red and heavy, over the horizon, Andy didn’t storm out as usual. Instead she looked around the table, her eyes traveling over everyone until they rested on Nile. “Well,” she said. “I suppose I’ll bid you all a good night.”

“Be safe,” said Nile, and Andy cracked a grin.

“Wolves aren’t really interested in _safe_ ,” she said. “But I appreciate the sentiment.”

Nile wanted dearly to stay up and speak with Quỳnh, but as darkness fell, she felt her eyes growing heavy. After all, Nicky and Joe pointed out, she hadn’t slept last night—what she _had_ done was race across the moors, almost sink into a swamp, and spend the rest of the night and day having her entire worldview undone. It was no wonder that she was tired.

Still, she rather resented going to bed, and the heavy, dreamless sleep that fell upon her as soon as her head hit the pillow.

She was surprised to find that when she awoke, it was still dark out. She’d thought that she would be dead to the world for far longer than…she checked her pocket watch. She’d gone to bed early, true, but it was still the middle of the night; she’d slept about six hours.

Not about to look a gift horse in the mouth, she dressed quickly and went downstairs with all the eagerness of a child on Christmas morning. Following the sound of voices, she found Booker and Quỳnh sitting in the library, chatting and playing cards.

Quỳnh smiled when she saw Nile, and it was like the sun rose in her face, the way her smile brightened it. “Ah, Nile!” she greeted. “I did not _expect_ to see you tonight, what with your adventures last night, but I must admit that I _hoped_ to see you again.”

“Likewise,” said Nile. If a twinge of jealousy pulled at her heart, she ruthlessly pushed it down--Quỳnh had saved her life, and told her the truth when no one else would, and she deserved nothing but good things from Nile after all that she had suffered. Nile’s _tendre_ for this woman’s wife didn’t even merit a jot of consideration in light of all that.

“You want to play?” asked Booker, gesturing toward the cards.

“Oh, _Booker_ ,” said Quỳnh. “We can play cards _any_ night—how many nights do I get to meet the newest member of our family for the first time?”

Booker frowned, confused. “It’s not the first time.”

“Last night, she met _me_. Tonight, I would like to meet _her_.”

Booker rolled his eyes.

Quỳnh stood and gestured to the door. “Come with me?” she said. “We can go to the music room. I think it’s a very comfortable room for getting to know someone in.”

“I haven’t spent much time in there,” said Nile tentatively, following her down the dark hallway. The house had an eeriness to it during the day, but it was downright unnerving at night. The darkness exaggerated its stained walls and leaking ceilings, made them not merely the marks of a house in ill repair but the signs of a house where no one lived, as if the house itself arose to reject all signs of human life when its usual inhabitants were not working to beat back the decay.

Ahead of her, the red folds of Quỳnh’s dress—perhaps the white one was being washed of bloodstains—beckoned to Nile like a torch guiding her way. She turned back to give Nile a rueful look. “I know,” she said. “Apparently the pianoforte is a dust trap, and since no one plays but me the room is generally kept covered up. It’s very tiresome.” With that, she swept into the room and turned on the gaslights, pulling a cover off one of the love seats and settling herself down into it.

“Sit!” she said, indicating the cushion beside her.

Nile sat gingerly. She supposed it was silly to feel awkward about being close to Quỳnh—after all, the woman had held her against her own body on Luna’s back after dragging her out of the bog. And still Nile felt very _aware_ of her, the darkness around them making their closeness on the love seat feel even more intimate than it already was.

“So,” said Quỳnh. “Tell me. What is your favorite new song you have heard this year?”

It was the last thing on earth that Nile had expected her to ask, and, caught off guard, she laughed. “Why?”

Quỳnh’s eyes were bright as she shrugged. “I hear all kinds of things about you from my brothers,” she said. “How you are willing to help them with all sorts of tasks, and how they enjoy your company, and how grand they think your magic is. These are all good things to know. But me, I don’t think I can really _know_ a person unless I know what sorts of things they enjoy, and how they like to spend their time.”

“That makes sense,” said Nile, still in good humor. “I don’t know that I have a _favorite_ new song, but I can tell you about some of the new music I _liked_ this year.”

She told Quỳnh about her favorite singers and musicians, and the handful of concerts she’d been to in the last year, and about buying broadsheets of some of the songs she’d liked so that she and her brother could try singing them at home. In telling Quỳnh this, she realized that she’d liked some of those songs more than she’d realized at the time. For a while, she hadn’t really enjoyed much of anything, interested in nothing but sleep and the tangle of dark and confused thoughts in her head, but as she looked back, she could find scattered bits of joy in the memories of singing with her brother and reading through a lyric sheet and closing her eyes in the dark of a concert hall, letting the music surround her.

Quỳnh listened with rapt interest, sighing at Nile’s concert descriptions and smiling at her anecdotes about Elijah.

“Oh,” she said when Nile was done, “I miss _many_ things about being able to leave this place and see the light of day, but I think learning new songs must be somewhere on that list.”

A bit of Nile’s happiness faded, and she said, “I’m sorry. It must be so lonely for you here.”

“Lonely, yes,” said Quỳnh. “Also very boring. I can’t remember the last time I stayed in one place for over thirty years! I heard you met Celeste Moreau, and Lev Lukyanov. Do you know _I_ have never met them? I remember when they were born, and I knew their parents, but I have never met them—I simply follow the adventures of their lives like characters in a story.” Her face fell, but then it brightened again. “How brilliant to get to meet _you_ , though, Nile! I never dreamed that another of us would be born in this era where magic has been forgotten. But I’m so pleased to be proven wrong.”

Nile thought back to her first day at Scythian Manor, when she had asked Booker what Quỳnh was like. Someone who enjoyed life, he had said. Someone who loved fiercely, and whose love felt like an honor. He hadn’t been lying. “I have a lot to learn about magic,” she said. “But I’m excited about it.”

“I’m glad,” said Quỳnh earnestly. “Booker was telling me about your magic lessons today. It sounds as if Andy’s efforts to help you feel your magic were successful?”

“I think so,” Nile said, and Quỳnh nodded.

“Andromache has been rather a stubborn old fool about many things when it comes to you, but you will never find a better magic teacher. She taught me, back in the day, you know?”

“When was that?” asked Nile. If what Quỳnh had said last night was any indication, she was at least two thousand years old. And if Andy had been her teacher…the thought was mind-boggling.

“Oh,” said Quỳnh airily, “A long time ago, now. Back when Andy and I came into our magic, it was a bit like now—there weren’t many of us, and we had to figure many things out for ourselves. That’s one advantage of the modern era, I think. I’m glad the book collection is proving to be useful for something! Andy and I were never book lovers, but the boys are so fond of them, and they were so disappointed when they couldn’t find a way to break the curse in any of their books.”

It didn’t escape Nile’s notice that Quỳnh had dodged the question, but nor did it escape her notice that her face had fallen at the mention of the curse. “Have Joe and Nicky and Booker told you how _Andy_ wants to try and break the curse?” she asked.

Quỳnh’s smile vanished completely now, and the curve of her mouth spoke of frustrated, angry sadness. “I know,” she said. “I know that Andy wants Merrick’s head on a pike. I think that would be very satisfying, but I don’t know if it will actually break the curse.”

“Why wouldn’t it?” asked Nile curiously. “I don’t really know enough about magic to know if that’s…a normal thing. That you can just break a spell by killing the person who cast it.”

“Merrick didn’t cast it,” Quỳnh corrected. “His pet magician did.” Her lip curled in anger. “The _nerve_ of that woman! But to answer your question, it does happen that way sometimes. It depends on the magic, but sometimes the person who casts a spell is like, oh, I don’t know, like a prism, guiding the lines of magic, and without that person, the spell cannot last. But not every spell is like that. _This_ spell is obviously not like that, because Kozak is dead, and yet the curse remains.”

Nile nodded, digesting all this. “What _is_ this spell like?”

“That’s just it,” said Quỳnh. “I don’t know. Perhaps killing Merrick really will end things, since he must be tangled very deeply in it. But I’m not sure. It is a one-of-a-kind spell and very messy, and without Andy, I’m afraid I can’t even really see the nature of the curse.” The corner of her mouth trembled, and for a moment Nile feared that she would start to cry, but she didn’t—she merely flattened out her mouth into an unhappy line and said, “It feels like pieces have been taken out of me, you know? To lose Andy, to lose my magic, to lose my mind and my body every day….” She shook her head. “It takes a great deal of work for me to feel like a person at all most of the time.”

“I’ve never been cursed,” said Nile, “but I do know what it’s like not to feel like a person sometimes. And for what it’s worth, I’ve only known you a couple of nights, but I think you’re a rather wonderful person.”

The smile was back—not as bright as before, but perhaps a little warmer. “You’re very sweet,” said Quỳnh. “I think you’re quite what we needed here at Scythian Woods, Nile.”

In all her pride, Nile must have thought something similar, when she’d been so confident less than a day ago that she could break the spell, easy as that. “I hope so,” she said. “I’d like to think I could be of some help to you all here.”

“Oh, you’ve already been that.” Quỳnh waved a hand in a casual gesture that Nile was fairly sure she’d seen Nicky make; she wondered if Quỳnh had picked it up from him or if he had picked it up from her. “Booker sings your praises regularly about the basil you made grow in his garden, and you wouldn’t believe how pleased Joe and Nicky were when you fixed that window, and the pipe in the boiler room.”

“That seems to be my…my gift, when it comes to magic,” said Nile. “Fixing broken things.”

“How does it work?” asked Quỳnh, sounding fascinated. “I used to know people who were very good at magical healing, and they could never quite explain to me what it was they did. It sounds like perhaps you do something similar.”

Nile described the feeling of putting a puzzle together that she’d had with the window, and the sense of wrongness she’d gotten from the horse’s leg and how she’d put it right, and the way she’d begun to visualize the lines that held things together with Andy that morning. Quỳnh listened eagerly, nodding along when she was excited by Nile’s successes as if she couldn’t wait for the next thing Nile would say.

“That’s amazing,” she said when Nile had finished. “It seems as if you’ve fallen very naturally into your gift—already you’re seeing the patterns that make sense to you and making use of them. I think you must be very powerful.”

“Oh, no,” said Nile in instinctive denial. “I mean, I just found out about all this last night.”

Quỳnh shrugged. “What does that matter? When you have such power, you have it.”

Nile swallowed, humbled by the matter-of-fact confidence in Quỳnh’s voice. “Quỳnh?” she asked tentatively.

“Yes, Nile?”

“I think I saw the curse this morning, when I was working with Andy. When she was teaching me to sense things magically, I thought—I thought I saw this sort of dark cord that tied her to…something.”

“To _something_ ,” Quỳnh repeated, her eyes sharp.

Nile nodded. “I couldn’t see what, exactly. But do you think that could be helpful? If I saw the curse, and—did whatever it is I do to it? Fix it, but in reverse?” _Fix you_ , she thought of saying, but neither Andy nor Quỳnh was broken, and Nile didn’t want to even imply it.

“I don’t know, Nile,” said Quỳnh seriously. “I know that Booker and Joe and Nicky have seen the curse, and have been unable to touch it. But I also know that you see patterns they do not—your gifts are very different. I think it is worth a try, anyway. Do you think that you can try and sense me with your magic again?”

“It’s worth a try,” Nile echoed, and Quỳnh grinned at her.

“That’s the spirit.”

Nile closed her eyes and tried to recreate that feeling of heightened awareness she’d had in the yard that morning. It was trickier now, she found. Outside, with its fresh smells and cool air and life everywhere, with Andy warm and alive by her side, it had felt easier to sink into that feeling of connectedness. In this creaky, dark house, with the gaslight an orange circle projected on the back of her eyelids and the sinking feeling that she now knew was the curse, she felt…small. Not in the way she had before, of being part of a larger network of power and life connecting, but in a way that made her feel weak and foolish.

Suddenly, Quỳnh was holding her hand, a spot of warmth in the chilly room. “Focus on my hand, Nile,” she said. “Clear your mind of all the things that have gone wrong in this room, and think about that warmth, and how that energy connects me and you.”

She bit her lip and tried again, the point of contact between them like a small glow in the darkness of her mind. And slowly, slowly, she thought she could sense whatever it was she had tapped into before, but a different side of it, like the negative of a heliographic print. The wood of the pianoforte was _not_ alive, but it had been, and Nile could feel the way that the potential life in the wood and the potential music in the keys connected past and future with the present of the music room. The paintings on the wall held their own lines of magical energy--some radiated with lines connecting them to Joe and his magic, some with lines connecting them to the memories of where Andy and Quỳnh had bought them, all with the lines that defined the canvas and the frame and the paint and their relationships to each other and the world around them.,

And next to her, Quỳnh, Quỳnh like a starburst of countless lines of power and feeling around a sun as bright as Andy’s. It was overwhelming to feel her—the tightly controlled rage, the restless energy, the fierce love, the power and the strength and the years of her—against the relatively tame patterns in the rest of the room. But Nile forced herself not to just bask in the woman’s complex glow, but to feel out that place where a curse that shouldn’t be there was pulling at her.

As with Andy, the curse on Quỳnh seemed like a dark, twisting cord, a dissonant chord in a beautiful melody. Nile tried to think about in terms of the broken window she’d fixed, or the bending basil plants she’d helped heal, like maybe there was something to straighten out in this thread that would fix the problem.

But whereas she’d _seen_ what the horse’s broken bone was supposed to be like, or how the length of pipe was supposed to fit in place, she couldn’t actually see the shape of this curse—it extended beyond her field of magical vision. The thread leading away through the front door must have been the one leading to Merrick, but that wasn’t the only one—another branch of the curse connected Quỳnh to _something_ nearby, but she couldn’t see what, exactly. The effect wasn’t unlike having missing pieces to a puzzle.

Disappointed, she opened her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I could _almost_ see it, but it was like—like I couldn’t see _all_ of it, you know, and I needed to see all of it to figure out how to fix it.”

“No need to be sorry, Nile,” said Quỳnh with a sad smile. “It was very good of you to try.”

“I feel like I got your hopes up for nothing,” said Nile, cursing her foolish pride.

“Oh, hush.” And then Quỳnh was grabbing Nile’s face between her hands and planting a kiss on her lips, and Nile froze. It was an innocent enough little kiss—a close-mouthed, quick little peck, such as she might have given one of her little cousins when they crawled into her lap to demand attention. And yet, it seemed to shut all the rational parts of Nile’s brain down, leaving her blinking and breathless.

Quỳnh pulled back, still holding Nile’s face in her hands, and said, “It is good for us to get our hopes up, sometimes. I am glad you are here to give us new hope.”

 _Oh_ , thought Nile. _Oh, dear_.


	7. Chapter 7

It wasn’t long until sunrise, but Nile excused herself from the music room to get another hour or two of sleep, and Quỳnh let her go with a smile. Nile trudged upstairs feeling like she had when she was a teenager, like she had too many feelings in her skin and didn’t know herself quite well enough to know what to do with them. It was one thing to develop tender affections for _one_ woman who would never love her back because she had been married for longer than Nile had been alive. Tt was another thing to develop affections for _both_ parties in the marriage. She felt ridiculous, and even getting what her watch told her was another hour and a half of sleep didn’t wipe the feeling from her.

Unsurprisingly, everyone else was already eating breakfast when she arrived downstairs, and the novelty of Andy smiling at her in the morning rather than being gone or sullen at her approach was too novel for Nile not to smile back at her. Nicky handed her a plate with bread and jam and sliced fruit and a cup of coffee, and she settled into her seat and tried to feel…normal.

And then of course Andy had to say, “Booker tells me you and Quỳnh had a nice talk last night,” and Nile just about choked on the piece of bread she was eating.

Joe patted her on the back while she coughed. When she was finally finished, Booker and Andy were both giving her quizzical looks. “All right there?” Andy asked.

“Oh—yes, of course,” she said. “I’m sorry, I just wasn’t expecting you to say that.”

“Evidently.” Andy raised an eyebrow, but she was still smiling. “Surely you’ve realized that Booker, Nicky, and Joe pass messages from me to Quỳnh and from her to me? It’s not really the same as being together, but at least we get to know a bit about what’s going on in each other’s lives.”

Of course they did. Now that Andy said it, it was obvious. She just-- Quỳnh wouldn’t have told Booker about kissing Nile, would she have? Then again, if it had been completely innocent and chaste, why _wouldn’t_ she have told Booker? And why wouldn’t he have told Andy?

Nile covered up her roiling emotions with another sip of coffee.

She spent another hour or so that morning with Andy practicing her magical vision. It was important, Andy said, for Nile to be intimately familiar with her own magic, and the patterns her own magic showed her in the surrounding environment, before trying anything large with it. Nile might have thought that this was a hint about her trying to break Quỳnh’s curse the previous evening, but Andy seemed calm and encouraging about it rather than irritable and ready to kill Stephen Merrick, so Nile decided that this was a more general guideline rather than something more pointed. It didn’t make her feel any less awkward about Andy’s warm hands correcting her stance as she tried to feel the force of the earth under her feet, or about the rough sweetness of her voice in Nile’s ear as she stood there, eyes closed, trying to sense the life force in the plants in the garden.

When Andy proclaimed them done with that particular exercise, Nile casually suggested that she might help Booker with the hedges for a while before luncheon, if Andy didn't need her for anything else. Andy was amenable, and so Nile went around to the front of the house, feeling a bit as if she were running away.

“Oh, hello,” said Booker when she approached him. “Magic lessons going well with Andy?”

“Well enough, I think,” said Nile. “She said that I shouldn’t overextend myself in one go, though, so we thought I’d come and help you for the rest of the morning.”

“Fine with me,” said Booker, yanking at a weed that had grown around the stem of a hedge. “Find a weed to pull—we’ve got plenty to go around.”

“No gloves?” asked Nile. Booker gestured with his head to his knapsack on the ground, and Nile poked around carefully among the gardening shears and cleaning rags until she found a pair of gloves.

“Our hands heal quickly enough from thorns and blisters and whatnot,” Booker said as she put them on. “We got a little more careful about it when we thought you might be shocked if your hands healed before your eyes. Not a problem anymore, but I suppose it’s not a bad thing to be careful.”

Nile frowned at him. “I can’t believe you went to that much trouble to hide the truth from me. That’s ridiculous.”

“What isn’t ridiculous about our life here?” asked Booker philosophically.

Her irritation at the deception suited her purposes just as well as her earlier mildness. “Booker,” she said, “as long as we’re talking about secrets…you didn’t tell Andy that Quỳnh kissed me, did you?”

Booker dropped his hands from the weed and looked at her. “What?”

“It was _completely_ innocent,” she insisted. “Quỳnh was just happy that I’d helped her try and learn more about the curse, and that she had someone new to talk to. There wasn’t any… _intention_ behind it. And she and Andy have been through so much, there’s no sense in making complications between them where there aren’t any.”

“Ah…” Booker laughed, a little nervous, a little disbelieving. “For what it’s worth, Quỳnh didn’t tell me that she kissed you. According to her, you talked about music.”

“Oh.” And now Nile had just revealed what Quỳnh hadn’t. She felt like all the blood in her body had rushed to her face, and she pressed her lips together and looked for a weed to pull.

“You like them, don’t you? I mean, we knew about your, ah—your fondness for Andy.”

“You _did_?” Her humiliation was complete.

Booker shrugged and gave her a kind smile. “Look, none of us blame you. Andy’s been breaking hearts for thousands of years. If she hadn’t been the longest-married woman on the planet when she and I met, _I_ might have made an advance after my wife died. And Quỳnh… Quỳnh’s amazing. Neither of them would be…angry, or jealous, or whatever it is you’re afraid of.”

“I don’t---” She couldn’t really even put her finger on _what_ she was afraid of. People grew out of these attractions, didn’t they? Goodness knew Nile had had many tender feelings of love growing up for people she didn’t even remember now. But somehow the idea felt less like a relief than its own kind of pain, knowing that Nile would, if what everyone else told her was true, remain exactly as she was for hundreds or even thousands of years. There wasn’t much chance of her marrying and growing old with someone. There wasn’t even much of chance for what Joe and Nicky had, or—or what Andy and Quỳnh had. And she wanted it, painful separation and curse and all.

She wanted to ask Booker if he ever felt alone, if it was difficult not to have a magician as a partner the way the others did, but she didn’t want to hurt him. So instead she took a deep breath and said, “Can we talk about something else now?”

“Of course,” said Booker with a nod, his eyes still very gentle as he looked at her.

“And—and please don’t talk about this with the others. _Especially_ not Andy or Quỳnh.” The idea of them laughing over her childish crush was absolutely unbearable.

He lay a hand on his heart. “Your secret is safe with me.”

The rest of the morning was spent companionably enough, and she thought she managed to sit next to Andy at luncheon and behave like her normal self. After eating, she joined Andy, Nicky, and Joe in the music room. “If you and Quỳnh are going to sit in here,” Nicky explained, “we need to make the place look a little nicer.”

Nile smiled, her heart full of affection for him, for Booker, for Joe, for this place that had strangely become a home to her. “That’s really kind, thank you.”

Andy being Andy, she decided to mix the cleaning with magic lessons, having Nile feel out the holes in a moth-eaten curtain with her magic and slowly try to use the lines of magic to extend the frayed threads in the curtain, making the holes weave themselves together again. It was finicky work—Nile thought it might have been easier, if not more attractive, to simply patch the curtain—and when she opened her eyes again, she found she was sweating a little with exertion. Joe and Nicky were watching with fascination.

“That’s remarkable,” Joe proclaimed. “Think of all the things you could do with that!”

“I could become the world’s most successful tailor,” Nile joked.

“Or plumber,” Nicky pointed out. “Gardener.”

“Oh, you,” said Joe, swatting at Nicky’s arm. “I’m serious! It’s obviously a marvelous gift for this house in particular, but it could be so useful in—healing, or mending places that have been damaged by war, or homes that have fallen into disrepair but whose owners can’t afford to fix them.”

Andy gave Joe an indulgent look and said, “Not so fast, Yusuf, I think we’ll need to work up to that sort of thing,” but as her eyes slid over to Nile, the look in them was pleased and proud.

“Plus, you know, we’ll all need to be not stuck at this house for me to try and save the world,” Nile pointed out as lightly as she could, but she regretted her words at the way their faces fell.

“There is that,” said Nicky heavily.

Andy nodded and busied herself with tying the curtains back into their original position, before they’d let them hang down so that Nile could mend them. When she spoke again, her voice was muffled by the curtains’ folds. “When I think of all the things going on in the world that we could be at least _trying_ to help with, I swear I want to burn this house to the ground.”

“Oh, please don’t,” said Joe. “After all the work we’ve put into this house, if we had to start living in the stables I think I’d just cry.”

“And no one wishes to see that,” said Nicky. “Listen, we are all getting ahead of ourselves. You’ve really only just gotten here, Nile. Your gifts are wonderful, but surely we have many more things you can do with them here before we turn our sights to mending things elsewhere, no?”

“Of course,” said Nile. “It’ll probably be a long time before I’m good enough to even _think_ about trying anything bigger.”

It wasn’t _exactly_ true. She’d already made a stab at the curse. And she seemed to be getting better at this every day—magic, she imagined, didn’t necessarily follow the same timeline as learning to play the violin. As Quỳnh had said, when you had the power, you had it. But though the ideas of healing or mending homes appealed to her, the idea of leaving the other five magicians at Scythian Woods _didn’t._ Nicky and Joe and Booker would never leave while Andy and Quỳnh were still under the curse, and, though Nile knew they would let her go with smiling encouragement if she ever decided she did want to strike out on her own, she already felt in her heart of hearts that _she_ could never leave while Andy and Quỳnh were still under the curse.

As if Andy sensed the untruth beneath her words, she met Nile’s eye with the barest hint of a smile. “Nile,” she said, “you’re already that good.”

That night, after Andy had vanished prowl the the trees outside the house—she’d told Nile that, though she didn’t have many conscious memories from being in her wolf form, she generally got the sense that she spent a lot of time roaming the same way she did in human form—Nile sat down with Nicky and Joe in the library to wait for Quỳnh.

Nicky peered at her from the book he was reading. Poetry, Nile thought. “I would have thought after the last few nights you’ve had, you might wish to get some sleep tonight.”

Nile couldn’t exactly explain to him about her kiss with Quỳnh the previous night or the foolish crush she’d begun to harbor for both Andy and Quỳnh, or the way that rather than sensibly putting a bit of distance between herself and the objects of her affection, she wanted to spend as much time as she could around them. So instead she simply shrugged. “Too much going on to sleep right now—I’m too awake. Maybe my mind will settle down a little later.”

“Well,” Nicky sighed, “I certainly know the feeling of having a mind too full of thoughts to be able to sleep, even when you’re tired. Do you want to play a game of chess, perhaps?”

She shook her head. “Nah, you read your book. I’ll find something to do with myself until Quỳnh gets here.” She drifted over to the desk, where Joe was sitting with his sketchbook. She hadn’t meant to bother him, only to get a glimpse of what he was drawing, but when she saw the outline of a face she recognized as Henry—Stephen—Merrick’s, she gasped.

Joe turned his head around to look at her, and she pointed.

“That’s Merrick, isn’t it? In the future?” She studied the rest of the drawing. The background was still sketchy, but from the shapes Joe had outlined, she thought it looked like the entryway to an upscale hotel. “Do you know where that hotel is?” she said, excitement rising in her. “Surely we can find out, and go catch him there!” The rest after ‘catching’ him was still rather nebulous in her mind, as Andy’s decapitation idea still made her uncomfortable, but that was rather putting the cart before the horse, she thought.

To her surprise, Joe shook his head, resigned. “I’m sorry, Nile, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up about it. It’s like I said before, drawing the future isn’t always as useful as you’d think—this could be a drawing of Merrick fifteen minutes from now, or it could be a drawing of him two weeks from now. Even if we knew exactly where he was going to be, that wouldn’t tell us _when_.”

“Oh,” said Nile, disappointed. “But surely this kind of thing must be _some_ use in tracking him down?”

“I suppose,” said Joe. “I’ve drawn him dozens of times before, and a few times one of us has managed to be in the same place at the same time as him. But it’s difficult to make any kind of solid plan, and you really need to have a plan when taking on Merrick, particularly when it’s one of us up against his army of private guards.”

Nile wanted to stamp her foot in frustration like a child. “Of course he travels with an army of private guards.”

“Mercenaries, really.” Joe sketched out a face behind the hotel receptionist’s desk, then erased a stray line and brushed away eraser dust with the side of his hand. “I’d say he’s paranoid about us finding him—and he certainly has cause to be—but frankly I think he’s accumulated other enemies over the years. At least he certainly gets sued often enough.” He looked up from his sketchbook with a crooked smile. “Have you looked at our scrapbook of his misadventures over the years at all?”

“A little,” said Nile. “I was trying to look for patterns in where he goes, since you said that magic was all about patterns, but I haven’t found anything yet.”

Joe nodded glumly. “Maybe I shouldn’t have given it to you. It feels like everything having to do with Merrick is just false hope after false hope.”

“And yet we cannot treat all hope as false,” said Nicky, looking up from his book. “It is a good thing that we have not given up. We will find him, beloved.”

“Oh, surely we’re not speaking of _Merrick_ again, are we?” Nile turned rapidly around from Joe’s desk to see Quỳnh, lounging against a bookshelf and fixing them all with a slightly exasperated smile. “I suppose you are drawing him again, Yusuf, and that’s the cause of the long faces?”

“Quỳnh!” Nile greeted, her heart leaping in her breast. “Joe was just explaining a bit to me about how drawing the future works.”

Quỳnh crossed the room to lay her hands on Joe’s shoulders, placing a sisterly kiss on his hair. “Our Joe’s gift is very frustrating to him at times,” she said to Nile.

Nile nodded. _See_ , said a little voice inside her, _Quỳnh kisses everyone in her family. Completely innocent._

Joe closed his sketchbook and tilted his head back to smile into Quỳnh’s face. “You’re clearly not in the mood for a discussion of the existential uncertainty of the future,” he said. “What do _you_ want to do tonight, Quỳnh?”

She looked around at them all with a considering expression on her face, and then said, “I hear you are all woefully out of practice with your weapons. So am I, I think, but not so badly out of practice as you. Nicolò, let us show Nile how to use a longbow, and then I will bet you a batch of your chocolate orange biscuits that I can outshoot you. Best out of five shots?”

Nicky set his book on the small table beside his chair and peered at Quỳnh through narrowed eyes. “What do I get if I win?”

“You get…hmm. Oh, I know. I will write you a song about the time Yusuf thought you were drowning and threw himself off a boat.”

“Hey,” Joe objected, and Nicky laughed.

“All right, I accept your challenge. Nile,” he asked, “have you ever shot a longbow before?”

She hadn’t, because she hadn’t actually been some kind of antique weapons enthusiast in her life before Scythian Woods. But she was happy enough to accompany Quỳnh, Joe, and Nicky out to the yard where they trained with swords during the day. It seemed too dim for any kind of target shooting, but Joe and Nicky quickly lit lanterns around the stables and kitchen garden while Quỳnh set up a set of straw targets at what seemed like an unreasonably far distance to Nile, and by the time they were done, the yard was, well, not as bright as day, but as cheerfully lit as if they were having a garden party.

Quỳnh and Nicky patiently showed her how to string the bow, and how to hold it so that she would not injure herself when drawing it, and how to stand so that she was well-balanced and angled just so with respect to the target. Her attempts at actually shooting an arrow didn’t get the thing anywhere near the actual target, but Quỳnh and Nicky assured her that she was doing very well for a first try.

“Oh, don’t patronize me,” she grumbled, and Joe laughed.

“Believe me, Nile, you’re doing far better than I did my first time with a longbow. Fumbled the bowstring trying to get the thing set up and snapped myself in the face.”

“To be fair,” said Nicky, “none of us really knew how to use a longbow then. They were very new.”

Joe flapped a hand at him. “Ah, there you go again, trying to make me feel better about it. I’ve long since come to terms with the fact that this family has marksmen, and that I am not among them. Come here, Nile—sit next to me and we’ll enjoy the archery show.”

‘Archery show’ was a good word for it, Nile thought. She’d imagined that Quỳnh and Nicky would just…shoot at the target, but Quỳnh had a taste for trick shots, and since she shot first in every round, Nicky was obliged to imitate the kind of shot she had performed. It was astonishing to watch them shoot at angles and with their eyes closed and while doing somersaults, in the dark, and still hit the target every time.

“They’re so good at this,” she murmured to Joe.

He nodded and smiled proudly at Nicky. “They have been as long as I’ve known them,” he said. “When we first met Andy and Quỳnh, Nicky hadn’t discovered his gift yet, but he knew how to shoot, so he and Quỳnh became friends challenging each other like this.”

“That can happen?” Nile asked. “You can know you’re magic and just not know what your gift is?”

Quỳnh must have overheard her, because she looked over her shoulder at them and said, “Of course it can! Look at Andy and me! Andy walked the earth for thousands of years before she and I met, and she thought she had no gift at all!” She made a face. “Of course, once we met, it still took quite a bit of time to work it out. It’s not nearly so fun as yours, Joe.” That, thought Nile, imagining what it must be like to know that you could use your magic to kill with a thought or raise the dead, was a bit of an understatement.

“Existential uncertainty of the future,” Joe reminded her, and Quỳnh laughed.

“Ah, what a joy it was, meeting you.” To Nile, she said, “We thought perhaps that he and Nicky were like Andy and me, sharing a gift—it’s so rare for two magicians to awaken at once, and neither of them seemed to know what their gift was. But no, it was only that Joe didn’t want to waste his paper drawing the future when he could be decorating books, and Nicky had never cooked before.”

“You’d never cooked before?” Nile asked Nicky. “Really?”

He shrugged and stretched out his shoulders before picking his bow up again. “Cooking meat over a campfire, yes,” he said. “Before that? I might cut an onion or pick herbs for someone else to cook. Cook for myself, no.” He gave his husband one of his crooked little smiles. “But I learned all manner of things after I met Joe.”

Nile tried to imagine—Nicky was almost a thousand years old. What had people a thousand years ago even eaten? Were there restaurants? Or cookbooks? And Quỳnh and Andy were much older than that. She couldn’t quite wrap her head around it, so she thought instead about what Quỳnh had said about Joe decorating books, and the poetry translations that Joe and Nicky had made each other. It was easy for her to see now that Joe had been the one to make the one decorated with colored, swirling designs. But you didn’t just pick up a pen one day and know how to make a book, right? “Were you a professional artist?” she asked. “Before you became a magician?”

“Of a kind,” said Joe easily. “There was a good living in those days writing out books by hand and decorating them. It got even better after we discovered we were magicians and started copying out magic books—in those days, everyone wanted to buy magic books from actual magicians, even if we weren’t the authors.”

Because once upon a time, magicians had been common, or more common than they were now, anyway, and now Nile was the first to come into her power in over two hundred years, and no one even thought that magic existed except scumbags like Stephen Merrick. Nile suddenly felt very lonely.

“What’s wrong, Nile?” Quỳnh asked. “Your face went sad all of a sudden.”

She shook herself mentally. How could Nile wallow in feelings of loneliness, when Quỳnh only ever got to see members of her own family, and only at night? Nile had been lucky, that the others had sought her out and accepted her as one of their own. She resolved to take a more positive attitude about it, and gave Quỳnh the best smile she could manage. “I’m all right,” said Nile. “Just wondering when you were going to get this archery contest started again.”

“Oh, are we boring you?” Quỳnh asked, her eyes gleaming in the light of the garden lamps. “Well, let’s see if this captures your fancy!” She grabbed and nocked two arrows, and, to Nile’s astonishment, shot them both at the same time into the targets. Nile couldn’t stop herself from standing and cheering.

Nicky looked at the targets, and then at Quỳnh. “No fair. We said out of five. This will take it to six.”

He and Quỳnh argued cheerfully about whether this counted as one or two shots, and Quỳnh finally allowed that they could go out of seven instead. Nicky hit the target with both arrows, and managed to imitate the shot that Quỳnh bounced off the ground and into the target. In the end, though, Quỳnh examined the targets and gave an exuberant “Ha!” of victory. “Look at this, Nico,” she crowed. “I’m closer to dead center four out of seven!”

Nicky narrowed his eyes and squinted at the target she was holding himself. “ _Barely_.”

“'Barely' counts! Ha! I’ll have those chocolate orange biscuits tomorrow, if you please!”

Nile missed what Nicky said next. She’d gotten very comfortable sitting on the ground next to Joe, and though she hadn’t _thought_ she’d fallen asleep, one minute she was listening to Quỳnh claiming her prize and the next her head was in someone’s lap.

She’d thought at first that it was Joe’s, but then long hair brushed her cheek, and she looked up into Quỳnh’s face. Suddenly, her heart sped up and she felt very awake.

“I’m sorry,” she said. Joe and Nicky were nowhere to be seen. The archery targets had been put away, as had the bows, and the garden lamps had mostly been extinguished, leaving the yard draped in the heavy darkness of the dead of a cloudy night. Nile must have fallen asleep a while ago while everyone else cleared up. “I didn’t mean to—”

“You are always apologizing to me, Nile,” said Quỳnh. “ _I_ am the one who ought to be sorry. Of course you are tired. You’ve had a very taxing few days, and then I keep you up all night with my archery silliness.”

“I didn’t think it was silly,” said Nile truthfully. It had been fun. _Quỳnh_ was fun—the kind of person it made Nile happy just to be around. For someone clearly so deadly, someone Nile had thought was a mournful, vengeful ghost until a few nights ago, Quỳnh was already someone that Nile missed when she was gone. She couldn’t even imagine what it was like for Andy, and for a moment she didn’t know who she sympathized with more, Andy having to do without Quỳnh or Quỳnh having to do without Andy. “I wanted to be here with you,” she said, too sleepy not to be sincere.

Quỳnh swept a gentle thumb across Nile’s temple. “You’re a very kind person,” she said. “But you don’t need to stay awake to be here with me. Rest now.”

If Nile had been even half awake, she would have been mortified at the thought of lying with her head in the lap of a married woman she desired. If she’d been fully awake, she’d have found some polite way to extract herself from the situation. But she wasn’t, and Quỳnh’s lap was very comfortable, and so she closed her eyes and let herself enjoy the feeling of Quỳnh’s hand, warm against her face in the cool night.

When she awoke again, she was in her bed, and once again she’d slept in late. Everyone was probably finished with breakfast, she reflected. And this was getting ridiculous.

She freshened up, taking time with her hair and clothes, which she’d been far too careless about the last few days. She needed to feel adult, professional, well put-together for this conversation. Looking in the mirror, she marveled that the Nile she saw in her reflection was the same as the one who had come to Scythian Woods. So much had changed since then.

The day was cloudy again, and so the house was dim with gloom as she made her way downstairs, listening for the others. But their voices were cheerful and bright as she followed them to the Grand Sitting Room. They were talking about the archery contest, Nile realized, as they cleaned the mildew from the ceilings and washed the windows and dusted the shelves, and Andy was _happy_ , laughing at the story of Quỳnh and Nicky’s antics.

Maybe this could wait, thought Nile. She wouldn’t spoil Andy’s happiness for the world. Maybe it was best to just keep her mouth shut. But no, that was cowardly talk, that was the kind of secrecy that had poisoned her sense of security at Scythian Woods and made her distrust its inhabitants. She couldn’t do that to Andy.

Squaring her shoulders, she took a deep breath and walked into the room.

The men greeted her cheerfully with good mornings, and Andy said, “Well, look who’s awake! I believe you gave me a lecture, miss, about leaving you behind on my riding tours, but you can hardly get angry at me if you’re going to lie in bed all day!”

She was grinning as she said it, and ordinarily Nile might have taken this as an invitation for a bit of back-and-forth, some quick repartee. But not now—today, Nile was determined to get her words out. “Andy,” she said, “can I talk to you?”

Andy’s brow instantly wrinkled with concern. “What is it, Nile? What’s wrong?”

Nile’s heart hurt. Andy was so beautiful, and so good, and she had been through so much. And here was Nile, ready to spoil her happy spring morning. “It’s a private matter,” she said. “If—if we could talk in the music room?”

It occurred to Nile as she said it that perhaps that was a bad idea. Sitting in the room where Quỳnh had kissed her wasn’t exactly conducive to a nice rational conversation about this topic with Andy. But Andy was already nodding and striding out toward the music room. Nile gave the wide-eyed Booker, Joe, and Nicky an apologetic smile and followed after her.

“All right,” said Andy when they were in the room and had shut the door. “What’s the matter?”

“I need to tell you…” She looked at the ceiling. “Quỳnh kissed me the other night. And last night, I fell asleep with my head in her lap.”

Andy frowned, but the expression was confused more than angry. “Did you not want her to? Because Quỳnh would never press herself on someone unwilling, but if she misunderstood—”  
  
“Oh, no!” Nile exclaimed, horrified at the very idea. “No, nothing like that. It was—it was completely innocent, that’s what I wanted to tell you. She’s beautiful—well, of course she’s beautiful, I don’t have to tell you that—and she and I get along really well, but she loves _you,_ of course she loves you, you’ve been together for thousands of years, and—and--I’d never, _ever_ do anything to betray your trust, or hers, and I didn’t—I didn’t want you to hear from Joe, or Nicky, or Booker, about, about anything that happened between me and her, and get the wrong idea.”

Well, thought Nile, as her babbling words ran out, _that_ will certainly convince her that I’m not a schoolgirl with a crush. It was too bad that her gift was fixing broken things and not creating giant pits in the middle of the floor to sink into.

Andy just stood there for a long moment, her expression serious in a way that Nile wasn’t quite sure how to read. And then she stepped forward and took Nile’s hands in her own. “Nile,” she said, “you’re right, Quỳnh and I have been together for thousands of years. And there’s no one on this earth I love or trust more. But we’ve never stopped each other if one of us feels something for someone else. And I honestly can’t imagine anyone better for her right now, so if that’s something that both of you want, please don’t worry that I’ll be angry.”

If Nile thought she had been inarticulate before, she’d clearly been a fool, because she couldn’t think of a single thing to say now. “Uhh….”

“Or don’t,” said Andy with a shrug. “Like I said, neither she nor I would ever do anything you didn’t want. And you’ve put up with enough from me, the last thing I’m going do is make you manage unwanted advances from my direction. But, in case I haven’t been clear enough about this, you’re the best thing to happen to any of us in years. If that’s what you wanted, I know Quỳnh would be in good hands.” She lifted Nile’s hand in her own, and Nile was fascinated by the slender strength in Andy’s fingers. “If that’s what you wanted,” she said in a lower voice, “I know that _I_ would be in good hands.” She placed a chaste kiss on Nile’s fingers before letting her hand go, and then said in a more normal tone of voice, “We ought to go back to the sitting room, before the boys get panicked and start listening in at the door.”

Nile laughed, feeling a trifle hysterical. “Nosy,” she said, unable to think of anything better.

“You have no idea,” said Andy seriously. But then her grave face cracked, and she gave Nile a small, encouraging smile. “Shall we?”

“Let’s,” said Nile.


	8. Chapter 8

_Dear Elijah,_

_I’m sorry I’ve been so tardy about my letters, but things have been very busy here, to say the least! Scythian Woods is still Scythian Woods, so everything’s always a mess, but I think the garden is actually doing surprisingly well! I’m discovering all kinds of new talents here, and I think gardening might be among them. I’ve written Mama about it, and now she’s got Mrs. Cartwright from next door sending me tips about light and watering schedules and whatnot in Mama’s postscripts. Mr. Booker the groundskeeper is amused and says he’s never gotten so much advice on his gardening in his life._

_I’ll admit I’ve been staying up a bit too late these days, but in my defense, there’s always something to do and read and talk about, and Mr. Smith the housekeeper makes very strong, very good coffee. It reminds me a little of those conversations you’ve told me about in your dormitories. We don’t talk so much about religion or the meaning of life or Gothic novels, but we do talk a good bit about books and history and things, and the people here have so many interesting stories to tell about their lives._

_With respect to your question about Lady Andromache: I absolutely refuse to answer that, and if you tell Mama I have a crush on her, I’ll tell her about the time you broke the kitchen window playing ball when we were children and I blamed it on a passing bird._

_Speaking of new talents! As it turns out, I’m excellent at fixing broken windows. Who knew?_

_Good luck on your history exam—all of us are cheering you on at Scythian Woods, and I’m looking forward to coming to the city to see at least a little of you during the summer holidays._

_Your loving sister,_

_Nile_

Nile fell into a routine, spending her days working on her magic, her swordfighting, and the Warrens’ pasture fence, and at least three nights a week catching up on her sleep. As much as she wanted to see Quỳnh, she was tired and overwhelmed. It turned out that magic took about as much out of her as physical labor, and though everyone told her that, as with her body, she would get stronger in her magic the more she exercised it, it felt like rather an uphill climb some days.

She fell quickly to sleep one night after a half-hour spent reading one of Joe’s primers on magic for beginners, and awoke with a hand over her mouth and Quỳnh standing over her.

“Shh,” said Quỳnh, removing her hand as soon as Nile registered who it was. “I didn’t mean to startle you, but I thought you should know, it’s a _perfect_ night for a ride. Do you want to come with us?”

“Who’s ‘us’?” asked Nile rubbing sleep from her eyes.

Quỳnh smiled. “Why, Andromache and me, of course.”

Nile sat straight up at that. Though the raven was as friendly as ever during the day, Andy in her wolf shape had made herself scarce around the house and grounds, at least on the nights Nile had stayed awake to spend with Quỳnh. “Don’t take it personally,” Quỳnh had told her. “She’s very shy in this form—she’s not even sure about the boys sometimes, and she’s known them for hundreds of years.” But it was still a disappointment not to get to see her.

“I’d love to,” she said.

She and Quỳnh snuck downstairs (so as not to wake Joe and Nicky and Booker, Quỳnh whispered—she’d told them that she didn’t need them to stay up for her tonight). They went quietly out the kitchen door, and as Nile looked at the clear, velvety sky, the full moon shining like a silver pearl overhead, she thought that Quỳnh had been right—it _was_ a perfect night for a ride.

As they led Luna and Gringalet out of the stables, a dark shape appeared from around a shrub, and Gringalet made a noise of distressed surprise. Nile ran a comforting hand down his nose, whispering soothingly in his ear, but she could barely contain her own nerves and excitement as Andy, as larger than life in her wolf form as she was in her human one, walked over to sniff at Quỳnh’s hand and wag her tail happily.

“Ah, my love,” she said softly, “I’ve missed you, too.” Looking up at Nile, she smiled, one of the enigmatic smiles Nile was beginning to recognize as the one she gave when she was thinking about something that absorbed her. “Shall we go?”

Nile nodded and mounted Gringalet as quickly and carefully as she could, keeping up her calming nonsense noises to him as she settled herself in the saddle. When she was ready, she nodded again at Quỳnh and Andy. “Lead the way.”

Once, the curves of the land at night had been mysterious and intimidating to Nile, but under the silvery-white light of the moon, with Quỳnh’s hair flying out in its braid behind her head and Andy a swift, powerful flash of fur and teeth almost too quick to track with her eyes, Nile felt a powerful sense of contentment, of _rightness_ , of freedom. The nights were getting shorter but warmer as the spring turned to summer, and Nile knew these lands better now, could recognize the different farms and patches of trees and little streams. The night didn’t hold any fear for her anymore—it held her in its comforting embrace, loose enough to let her breathe freely, tight enough to keep her and Andy and Quỳnh together.

All the romantic notions in the world didn’t make boggy, sodden ground go away, though, and Nile was grateful for the care that Quỳnh took in guiding her around dangerous patches of land. They passed by the place where Nile had sunk on the night that she’d met Quỳnh, and Quỳnh gave her a rueful smile.

“It’s a little foolish to ride at night like this, I know. Don’t tell Yusuf and Nicolò—they can be dreadful fusses.”

“I understand,” said Nile, and she thought she did. She wasn’t trapped on the land in the way that Quỳnh was—she could leave whenever she liked, talk to people who knew she wasn’t dead. But the pressure of the curse weighed on her, too, and the sense of paranoia and frustration that the house’s constant fight to destroy itself created. “You have to find ways to escape.”

“Exactly,” Quỳnh agreed. She looked around, and sighed. “Shall we sit for a while? There’s a nice flat rock by a creek some fifty yards that way.” She gestured in a northerly direction, and Nile dismounted, careful not to get too close to Andy as she did.

“Sounds good,” she said. “I’m still not used to riding so much.”

Quỳnh laughed at that. “Oh, you cannot _imagine_ how sore my ass was those first few years after I met Andy! She had been riding horses for ages by then, but I hadn’t, and she had a _terrible_ habit of underestimating how long it would take us to ride somewhere. She’d say we could make it in an afternoon, and two days later, I’d be so stiff from being in the saddle that I could barely walk.”

They tethered the horses loosely to a tree and arranged themselves on the flat rock, which was still warm from the day’s sun. Nile felt a little of the tension leave her muscles. There was always a little frisson of _something_ that ran under her skin when Quỳnh was around, just as there was with Andy, but it felt a little less dangerous since the conversation where Andy had given her…permission, or what have you, to court Quỳnh. It felt less like walking a tightrope, and more like, well, like something wonderful might happen, but whether it did or not, Nile could enjoy the company.

The wolf sprawled herself down on the dirt between the stone and the creek, and yawned, showing off her huge teeth and making a kind of whining noise that made Nile grin. It sounded like Andy grumbling into her food when she wasn’t quite awake in the morning. Now that she thought of it, she didn’t imagine that either Quỳnh or Andy got a lot of sleep. Perhaps the spell that cursed them also gave them energy, or perhaps it was only Nicky’s coffee and spicy scrambled eggs that kept them going.

“She’s lovely, isn’t she?” asked Quỳnh, and Nile realized that she must have caught Nile staring at the wolf.

“She is,” said Nile honestly. “Seeing her as a wolf isn’t so different from seeing her as a human sometimes—she’s big, and graceful, and could kill me without thinking too hard about it.”

“Ha!” Quỳnh had a nice laugh, thought Nile. Big and amused and accompanied by a smile that lit up her whole face. “You’ve summed her up very nicely. Not that she would ever hurt you, Nile,” she added, still smiling but with a new sincerity. “She likes you.”

“You mean the wolf, or the woman?” asked Nile.

“Both.” Quỳnh studied her, her smile becoming smaller and more contemplative. “I miss her so dreadfully sometimes. Throughout all the long years of our lives, she’s been the only constant thing in my world. Civilizations rise and fall, kings are born and die, but my Andromache remains the same.” Her eyes drifted from Nile to the empty plain beyond the creek, her expression going distant. “I don’t know who I am without her, sometimes,” she said softly. “Sometimes I feel like I’m losing my mind. Even when I’m not a bird, I scarcely feel human. A wild animal, roaming the plains at night.”

Nile looked up at the moon, beautiful, distant, as ancient and natural as the tides. It reminded her quite a bit of the woman sitting beside her. “You’re a little wild, all right,” she said. “But you’re as human as anybody. Your family knows that. Hell, I’ve only known you a couple of weeks, and I know that.”

“You sound very confident,” Quỳnh said, turning her gaze back to Nile.

Nile shrugged. “I’d like to think I’m a fairly good judge of character,” she said. “And you’re…you make _me_ feel like more myself than ever. Like there are all these depths and parts of me that I didn’t even know about until you and Andy showed me.” She took a breath. Did she dare? She dared. She reached to lay her hand on Quỳnh’s. “I can’t know what it’s like to be you right now,” she said. “And I know I must seem like a baby to you. But if you don’t know who you are, or like who you are, you should at least know that _I_ like you. Very much.”

One second, Quỳnh was staring at her with those large, shining black eyes, and the next her mouth was on Nile’s, searing, demanding, _perfect._ There was nothing innocent or chaste about the feel of her tongue stroking against Nile’s before she pulled back a bit. “Please tell me you want this,” she murmured against Nile’s lips, her breath hot against Nile’s skin. “Please. I want you so badly.”

“I want this, Quỳnh,” said Nile, her voice muffled as she kissed her way down from Quỳnh’s face to her neck, and Quỳnh groaned with pleasure.

“Your mouth—” she cried.

“Your dress,” Nile said, pulling on it, trying to slide it down so that she could kiss the smooth skin of Quỳnh’s shoulders.

“Ah—ah—” Quỳnh reached awkwardly behind herself to undo the fastening at the nape of her neck. Nile got the idea and stretched her arm to help, awkwardly fumbling with the buttons at Quỳnh’s back. The motion brought her close up against Quỳnh’s body, pressing her breasts against Quỳnh’s and Nile felt heat between her legs, a pleasure like she hadn’t felt with another person in a long, long time.

Between the two of them, they managed the fastenings on Quỳnh’s dress, and it slipped down, pooling around her hips in a pile of soft, lustrous white fabric. Underneath, Quỳnh had nothing on but a chemise, which she pulled over her head with one hand. It mussed her braid, but the little hairs that escaped from it and fell around her face in wisps of shining black were so wonderfully imperfect and _human_ that Nile thought she had never seen something more beautiful. Unless, of course, it were the curves of Quỳnh’s breasts, no longer hidden by the chemise.

“What would you like?” she asked. Quỳnh doubtless had more experience, but Nile thought she’d gone without sex longer than Nile had been alive, so it was only fair that she got her pick.

“Touch me,” Quỳnh demanded, pulling Nile’s hand to her breast. Nile was happy to oblige, taking Quỳnh’s nipple between her fingers and lightly rubbing. With her other hand, she stroked Quỳnh’s side, marveling at the expanse of skin from her hips to her ribs to her armpit, unsure where to let her hand rest first. “Oh, oh, _Nile_ ,” said Quỳnh, and then she was kissing Nile again, as if she were drowning and Nile the only source of air.

She leaned forward quickly, and suddenly Nile was flat on her back on the rock, and Quỳnh was kissing down the front of her dress, reaching down to pull up Nile’s skirt. “What do you want, sweet Nile?” she asked. “Hand? Mouth? Thigh?”

“Oh, _shit_ ,” said Nile. She hadn’t rubbed off against another woman in, well, she didn’t even know how long. “Leg?”

Quỳnh grinned down at her and maneuvered herself so she was between Nile’s legs, gently pulling off Nile’s underthings and flinging them to one side. Then she moved again so she was balanced on her arms, her face around Nile’s chest and her thigh between Nile’s legs, Nile’s skirt on either side of it and her skin hot against Nile’s core. “Take it,” she said. “Take what you want from me.”

Nile moved herself against the strong smoothness of Quỳnh’s thigh, savoring the delightful friction and clutching at Quỳnh’s shoulders. She couldn’t figure out what to do with her mouth, now kissing Quỳnh’s chin, now the side of her neck, now her breast, tantalizingly close to Nile’s face as Quỳnh moved against her. They fell into a rhythm together, Quỳnh grinding against her as Nile rose to meet her, and the hot pleasure between Nile’s legs built to a crescendo and she was crying out, her pleasure echoing in the empty night sky.

“Your hand, Nile, please,” Quỳnh said breathlessly, and though Nile was too full of bliss to be very coordinated, her mind still floating in a haze of pleasure, she was happy enough to let Quỳnh rub herself against the heel of Nile’s hand, still more pleased to stroke at the wetness between Quỳnh’s folds, and best of all was when Quỳnh grunted and squeezed her legs tightly around Nile’s hand and let out a high-pitched whine against her neck.

Nile didn’t know how long they lay like that, with Quỳnh on top of her, the sweat drying on their bodies in the cool night air. Gradually, awareness returned to her, and she realized that it actually wasn’t very comfortable to be pressed against a rock in her now-soiled dress.

As if Quỳnh had read her mind, she groaned and sat up, shifting off of Nile to sprawl next to her on the rock. Nile winced and hope she didn’t scrape the bare skin of her shoulders against the stone.

Quỳnh said a few words in a language Nile didn’t know, and then said, “I didn’t actually _plan_ that when I invited you out for a ride, but I’m certainly glad it turned out that way.”

“Do you think Andy will mind?” Nile asked. “You know, since we just…did that in front of her?”

They both looked to where the wolf was sitting on her haunches, her head cocked to one side as if she genuinely couldn’t figure out what it was they had been doing, and Quỳnh laughed. “She’ll only be sad that she missed it,” she said. “If I know my Andromache, you have her heart as surely as you have mine.” She sat up and pressed another kiss against Nile’s mouth, this one less passionate but more affectionate. “Thank you, Nile,” she said, “for a wonderful evening.”

Nile rose the next morning feeling…good. Happy. She might have expected to feel a strain in her muscles from riding, or scrapes from the stone against her back, but evidently one benefit of magic that granted immortality was that it also spared its user such inconveniences, leaving Nile only with the warm, languid contentment that came from knowing she had been well fucked by someone she cared about very much.

It wasn’t late yet, the sun only just gracing the horizon-- Quỳnh would have only just transformed. They’d returned last night unable to keep from laughing every time they looked at each other, so Nile had gone back to bed to keep from waking the others, and Quỳnh and Andy had gone to sit in the kitchen garden and wait for sunrise. There was a kind of sad contentment in that fact, too, in the fact that Quỳnh and Andy could be together for a few moments then, and Nile thought it best to give them a little privacy after what she and Quỳnh had done on their ride.

When she got downstairs, Booker and Andy hadn’t arrived for breakfast yet, but Nicky was boiling water and making pastries, and Joe was sat at the table drawing. They looked up and smiled at her arrival. “Someone’s in a good mood,” Joe remarked.

“Someone _is_ ,” said Nile pertly, and poured herself a cup of tea from the pot on the table. She thought she tasted in it the threads of magic that Nicky wove in for alertness and good appetite in the morning, but for her part, she hardly thought she’d need either. After her night, she was wide awake and hungry.

Booker arrived a few minutes later, his hair mussed from sleep and his eyes half-closed. It was probably, reflected Nile, the most he’d slept at one stretch in a while. Nicky slid him a cup of coffee, which he accepted with thanks.

“Sleep well?” asked Nile.

His eyes met hers over the rim of his cup. “Pretty well, yeah. Did you have fun with Quỳnh last night?”

“Oh, yes,” said Nile, hoping her flush wasn’t evident to him. “We had a very good time.”

Just as Nicky was taking the pastries out of the oven, Andy appeared at the door. Her eyes met Nile’s and to Nile’s astonishment, a faint flush of pink rose on her cheekbones, and her eyes slid away. “Good morning, everyone,” she said in a husky voice, and then she cleared her throat. “What’s for breakfast?”

Nile wondered just how much Andy remembered from her time as a wolf, and did her best to compose her face and act naturally.

Andy sat next to her, close enough that Nile could feel her warmth, and Nile _had_ been too pleased to be embarrassed, but now she felt a twinge of awkwardness, and she looked away as Nicky set a platter of pastries down with an admonishment not to burn themselves eating them. Unfortunately, in looking away her eyes met Booker’s, and he frowned. He looked from Nile to Andy, and then his eyes slowly widened. “Ah,” he said.

“Ah?” asked Joe.

“Oh, uh, nothing,” Booker said, grabbing a pastry. Joe raised an eyebrow.

Nile closed her eyes and resigned herself to an embarrassing morning.

To her relief, Joe and Nicky didn’t say anything to her about it, and Andy seemed to get over her embarrassment once she woke up a bit more. By the time they were discussing how they wanted to spend their days, the tension had almost cleared.

Almost. When Nicky asked if they were going to go riding to see the tenants, Andy said brusquely, “No, I don’t feel like riding today,” and Nile thought about how her ride with Quỳnh had ended up and smiled, slightly hysterically.

They ended up instead in the library, which, true to form, had developed a kind of mold in the corners near the floor and ceiling that was of course perilous to books. Nicky stayed in the kitchen to mix up a kind of mold removing solution, a process that Nile was beginning to think of as a kind of magical battle, while Joe, Booker, Andy, and Nile went to cover the books and scrub at the corners they could reach with water and vinegar.

It was difficult to think about sex when one was using a scrub brush to remove mold, and the tension dissipated entirely as they worked.

“What _is_ the problem with this room?” Nile wondered. “Every other day it’s finding some new way to fall apart!”

“Personally,” said Booker, “I think it’s because the curse knows we like this room so much, so it goes out of its way to be particularly awful here.”

“For the _curse_ to know that, I think _Kozak_ would have to know that when she designed it,” Joe said from his perch atop a ladder, where he was trying to get at the mold on the ceiling. “She struck me as sadistic enough to have done things that way, but I don’t know if she was _knowledgeable_ enough to have done it.”

“Oh, who the hell knows what Kozak knew,” said Andy in a way that didn’t invite further conversation on the topic. “Joe, can mold hurt your painting?” She was standing next to the portrait of Andy and Quỳnh, and Joe turned around to look at her.

“It _can_ , and so can water, so please be careful.”

Nile went over to help make sure the vinegar solution didn’t drip from the wall above onto the painting, which brought her both close to Andy and close to the painted Andy and Quỳnh on the wall. It was a little strange, she reflected, to stand next to one’s employer when said employer had watched her fuck her wife while in the shape of a wolf. Nile kind of wanted to giggle at the thought, but something in the painting caught her eye and distracted her.

“Andy?” she asked. “I’ve never seen you or Quỳnh wear these necklaces.” She gestured to the pendants in the picture. “Do you still have them?”

Andy’s eyes flicked over to the painting, and there was wistfulness in her gaze. “I haven’t seen them in decades,” she said. “Quỳnh and I used to wear them all the time—there were days when, for a job, we needed to pretend to not be married, so we couldn’t wear rings, but the necklaces worked just as well.”

“What happened to them?” Nile asked, not wanting to pry but feeling as if she were on the bring of putting some important pieces together.

Looking away, Andy shrugged, focusing on scrubbing away a mold spot. “I suspect Kozak and Merrick used them in the curse,” she said. “They would have had a lot of our energy from being so close to us, and there are certainly spells that can draw energy from an object. If that’s the case, they were likely destroyed that night the curse was cast.” She let out a sigh. “It’s hardly the worst thing Merrick did, but it still makes me angry just to think about. One more reason to wring the bastard’s neck when we track him down.”

Nile looked again at the smiling portraits of Andy and Quỳnh. “I can see that,” she said. She had a lot of thinking to do.

***

_Dear Dizzy,_

_I know you weren’t expecting to hear from me. I wasn’t expecting to write. I won’t say I’m not still angry for the way you pushed me away after my time in the hospital, but we were dear friends once, and if you have it in you to feel that way for me even a bit, you should know that you’re still very dear to my heart. But that isn’t why I’m writing—I’m writing because I need a favor._

_Do you have any newspaper clippings from the day that Henry Merrick demonstrated that wound-healing ointment? I know it was years ago, and this must seem like a very strange request. But you remember how we agreed that there was something unpleasant about Merrick? I currently work for a very good woman who was badly hurt by Merrick’s actions in producing one of his ‘miracle cures.’ As a result, she can barely leave her house, and her wife was hurt as well. I cannot tell you more than that without betraying a confidence, but suffice to say that she and her wife and their household have been seeking out Merrick for restitution for years, but cannot manage to pin him down. They collect clippings from newspapers of him in an effort to prepare their case against him, but they don’t have any from his demonstration on the Searcher, I’ve looked._

_I’ve also written Jay on this subject. If you don’t want anything to do with me and ignore this request, or throw it into the fire unread, no hard feelings. But if you want to write me back, my address is on the envelope. Whether you have anything on Merrick or not, I would love to know how you are._

_Your friend,_

_Nile Freeman_

Excitement rose in Nile’s breast as she saw Booker driving the cart back from Riverside a few weeks later. Though the last trip into town hadn’t yielded much, hope sprang eternal, and she ran down to the stables to meet him. “Any mail for me?”

“Nice to see you, too,” he said. “Here, help me put the cart away and water the horses.”

Sometimes, thought Nile, it was very clear that Booker had been a father.

After they were done, he sifted through the packages of groceries and construction supplies and new books to find a small packet of letters. “There you are,” he said with a smile. “Three letters for miss Nile Freeman.”

One from Jay, one from Dizzy, and one from her mother. She clutched them to her, scarcely able to keep herself from tearing them open then and there. “Thank you,” she said. “I hope you won’t mind if I—” she was, technically, supposed to be helping him in the garden today.

He waved a hand at her. “Go! Open your letters. And if you ever see fit to tell us what it is you’ve been waiting for all this time, I for one am dying of curiosity.”

“As soon as there’s something to tell, I’ll tell you,” Nile promised, and she turned and raced back into the house, ignoring Joe and Andy’s inquisitive look from the Grand Sitting Room as she went upstairs and into her room.

It took only a second for her to see that both Dizzy and Jay had come through. She skimmed the letters before setting them on her nightstand to read in more detail later—she really didn’t want to take the time to cry right now, and to feel the painful joy of two friendships coming back to life. That would be something to sit with later. For now, she ran back downstairs, the other contents of their letters in her hands.

She burst into the Grand Sitting Room. “Where’s Nicky?”

Joe looked up from what, based on their conversation earlier that morning, Nile assumed to be the contract the Warrens were thinking of signing with a local textiles mill, which they had asked the inhabitants of the manor to look over for them. “The Green Drawing Room, dusting. Why?”

“Get him, and we’ll all meet in the library in five minutes, all right?”

“Wait, what’s in the library,” Andy called after her as she dashed out, but Nile was busy heading for the garden to fetch Booker.

A few minutes later, they all met her in the library, looking curiously at her. As if she understood that everyone was coming together, Raven-Quỳnh perched on the windowsill and pecked at the glass until Nile opened it. “Come on in,” she said. “This applies to you, too.”

“What is it?” asked Nicky. “I pray to God it’s not the floors again.”

“It’s not the floors again!” Nile took the newspaper clippings from her pocket. “This is what I was waiting for from my navy friends,” she said. “Take a look.”

She handed Nicky the clipping Jay had sent, and Joe, who was standing next to him, stepped closer to look over his shoulder. The clipping from Dizzy, Nile handed to Andy, and she frowned at it as Booker stepped in front of to peer at it upside down. “It’s Merrick,” said Joe, lifting his head from the clipping. “That demonstration you mentioned on your ship from last year?”

Nile nodded. “Exactly. But that’s not quite what I wanted to show you.” She tapped on Merrick’s chest in the engraved rendering that had accompanied the article about his demonstration. “Do you notice what he’s _wearing_ in the picture?”

It wasn’t an especially elaborate image, but it was clearly done, and the artist had had enough eye for detail to include Merrick’s rumpled shirt-sleeves, the crooked knot of his tie that he’d loosened in the heat, and the rectangular pendant around his neck.

Nile pointed from the image to the painted portrait of Andy and Quỳnh that Joe had done, and she could see the exact moment that it struck them all.

“My God,” said Joe. The raven cawed as if in agreement.

“I don’t understand,” said Booker. “We have _hundreds_ of news stories on him going back decades, and I’ve never seen him wear that before.”

“Because he’s usually in a full suit and wears the thing under his waistcoat!” Nile had been through the clippings in detail after it had dawned on her just where she’d seen that necklace before, and it was a common thread throughout them all. “But it was brutally hot that day on the Searcher, and he took off his jacket and waistcoat and did the whole demonstration in his shirtsleeves.” He’d made a lot of stupid remarks about it at the time that suggested that he thought he was very clever, which was one reason it stood out in her memory.

Andy’s eyes looked as if they would burn a hole in the newspaper clipping of Merrick. “So there’s one of them,” she said. “Where’s the other?”

“I’ve been thinking about this,” said Nile, “and reading the magic books, and I think you were right, Merrick _did_ use the necklaces for the spell, and he’s _still_ using them. When I tried to see the curse on you and Quỳnh in my magical vision, there were pieces I couldn’t quite put together, like these strands that were going off where I couldn’t see. But now I think I know what they were. One of them was connected to the necklace Merrick was wearing, and the other is connected to a necklace here. That’s why you can’t leave the estate, Andy! It’s not the _house_ you’re tied to, it’s the _necklace!_ You said that the necklaces held a lot of your magical energy, and I think _that’s_ what’s tying you and Quỳnh and Merrick and the estate together!”

“That’s brilliant, Nile,” Nicky breathed. “Of course. We should have seen it before.”

Nile dismissed this with a noise her mother would have chided her for. “You’ve had a lot on your minds. You just needed fresh eyes on the problem.”

Andy blinked as if she were waking from a dream, and she looked up from the clipping into Nile’s eyes, her own sharp and fierce. “Let’s find the second necklace,” she said. “If it’s how Merrick’s drawing energy from the land and house and Quỳnh and me, then there will be a pretty powerful magical thread from it leading straight to him.”

They searched the house from top to bottom that day, searching under rugs, behind shelves, in secret compartments. They went into rooms Nile only vaguely remembered from Joe’s tour when she’d first come to Scythian Woods, and into rooms she didn’t think she’d ever been in. They looked behind paintings, pulled books from shelves, went through every chest of drawers in the manor. Nothing.

As the sun dipped on the western horizon, Nile groaned, powerfully disappointed. “I’m sorry, everyone,” she said. “I really—I really hoped we’d be able to find it again.”

“Sorry?” Joe huffed in disbelief. “Sorry for what? This is the first real progress we’ve made on the curse in _years_.”

“We’ve been here for decades,” said Andy firmly. “We’ve only been looking for the necklace for a day. We can wait.”

Perhaps, thought Nile, looking at Andy, but it wasn’t Nile, or Joe or Nicky or Booker, who would have to pay the true price for that waiting. It was Andy and Quỳnh who would remain trapped, separated, as long as the curse lasted. Failure tasted bitter in her mouth.

“We have been searching all day,” said Nicky, “and we are all tired. Let’s eat something for supper and look again tomorrow.”

He was right, of course, but Nile didn’t have to be happy about it.

Everyone, of course, wanted to stay up that night and explain things to Quỳnh, who sat patiently in an armchair in the library and listened to what Nile had put together about the necklaces. When they had finished, Quỳnh nodded eagerly. “Oh,” she said. “That’s very good. That makes perfect sense. I had wondered how Merrick was able to draw upon our energy for his ‘miracle curse,’ but if the curse is grounded in something physical with deep connections to us, such as our necklaces, then I understand how he has managed to maintain it for so long over such great distances.”

Nile hadn’t even thought of that, but she supposed it made sense—the magnitude of this curse was such that it would have taken real energy to keep it running, and the fact that it was still working almost forty years later rather than running out of steam made everyone’s bafflement about it all the more understandable. “Do physical objects help spells last longer, then?”

Quỳnh nodded. “It depends on the object, of course, it has to be suited for the pattern the spell is creating, but something like our necklaces would work perfectly for it.”

“Andy thinks if we find the necklace here, we’ll be able to trace it back to Merrick,” said Booker. “I like the idea, but we have to be able to find the necklace.”

“Hmm.” Quỳnh pursed her lips. “I….theoretically, that should work, but….”

“What is it?” asked Joe.

“It’s only…hmm. How to put this? It seems to me as if this spell is built around a separation, yes? Separating Andromache and me. The distance separating Scythian Woods and Stephen Merrick. Of course he must keep us separate, because we can only use our gift if we are together. Must he also keep the necklaces separate?”

Nicky made a considering noise, and he and Joe looked at each other, having one of their silent conversations about the question.

“Would that matter for the purposes of finding him?” asked Booker. “It sounds like it would make things even better—maybe the closer the necklaces got to each other, the weaker the curse would get. I’ve seen spells that work that way.”

“So have I,” said Quỳnh with a smile that reminded Nile that she was very, very, old, not just compared to her but also compared to Booker. “But I have also seen spells that resisted that sort of weakening. Think of magnets—when you push the two ends that are not attracted to each other closer together, they push themselves away. What might happen if our necklaces behave this way while one is around the neck of Stephen Merrick?”

“It’ll tip him off and he’ll run,” said Nicky flatly. “Again.”

Booker visibly drooped, and Nile knew exactly how he felt. “So…what does that mean?” she asked. “If we can’t bring the necklaces together, can we not break the curse at all?” _That_ was a horrific possibility.

But Quỳnh didn’t seem upset. “Of course we can break the curse,” she said. “We don’t _know_ that the necklaces will behave this way, but it’s a possibility we should be aware of if we try and track Merrick through them. But when it comes to actually bringing the necklaces together, well, if all else fails, I know that the five of us have _more_ than enough power to do it by brute force if we have to. In fact, even if we don’t have to, I think brute force is a _very_ attractive option for bringing Merrick and the necklace he stole back to Scythian Woods.”

The men smiled at this. They were not particularly nice smiles.

“Maybe we were barking up the wrong tree today,” Nile suggested. “Perhaps the necklace is outside, buried in the ground somewhere. That would have been a much easier way for Merrick and Kozak to hide it so that you didn’t find it.”

“Especially if we didn’t even know to look for it,” Quỳnh agreed.

“If we couldn’t find it in the house in broad daylight,” Booker objected, “how are we meant to find it over some six thousand acres of moorland in the dark?”

“Magic,” Joe suggested. “That’s one of the things that tipped you off about the necklaces in the first place, wasn’t it, Nile? A line leading off of the curse?”

She nodded.

“That curse is a _mess_ , though,” Booker argued. “There are a thousand threads leading off of it, since it’s sucking energy from every living and nonliving thing on the damned estate.”

“So we follow some of these threads tonight,” said Nicky implacably. “And we follow some of them tomorrow. And we keep following them until we’ve found the necklace.”

Booker had no further arguments to this. They sat for a moment and tried to find the curse in their magical vision. Nile was growing used to the sight-feeling of that twisted, malevolent thing leading from Quỳnh and Andy’s bodies, but being accustomed to it didn’t make it any more pleasant. She didn’t know if what Joe, Nicky, and Booker saw was the same as what she saw—from what she understood, the patterns of magic worked differently for every magician, save perhaps Andy and Quỳnh, since they shared a gift—but clearly they saw _something_ , because after a long period of silence, Joe said, “There are a few long lines leading east. One of them is probably Merrick, and obviously I won’t find _him_ , but I thought I might trace the others and see what I find.”

Nicky nodded. “Booker and I will come with you,” he said in a tone that invited no argument.

“If we split up, we might follow more lines from the spell,” Joe pointed out.

“And if one of is alone and sinks into a bog?”

“I take your point,” Joe conceded.

“Nile?” Quỳnh asked.

Nile frowned and thought of the branches leading off the twisting core of the curse. “South, maybe?”

Quỳnh stood from her chair. “Nile and I will head south, then. We’ll meet back at the house an hour before sunrise?”

Joe checked his pocket watch. “About 5:30, then, so that’s what, some seven hours from now.”

“We’ll get hungry,” Nicky said, and he stood and walked to the library door. “I’ll pack sandwiches.”

About twenty minutes later, the men had walked off toward the east, and Nile, Quỳnh, and wolf-Andy were headed south, tracing one of the lines leading off of the curse. They were on foot so as to be closer to the ground, in hopes that they would detect the necklace sooner if it really were buried in the earth. The night was quiet and dark around them, save for the lantern Nile carried, and she felt alive with nerves. “I hope this is right,” she said anxiously. “It was all well and good connecting the curse to the necklaces when I was just looking at threads that didn’t fit, but actually trying to trace them somewhere is a horse of another color.”

“Ah, Nile, you worry too much about getting things right the first try,” said Quỳnh. “Believe me, trying and failing are things that you become very familiar with over the years, and there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s how we learn.”

“I know,” said Nile. “But the stakes are so high, for you and Andy.”

Quỳnh stopped, so Nile stopped, too, and then Quỳnh was holding Nile’s face between her hands. “My dear Nile,” she said, “you don’t know what it has meant to me to have you here to help us. The stakes _are_ high. But not only for Andromache and me, for all of us, and if we fail tonight, we will eventually succeed. Together.”

She sounded as if there wasn’t a doubt in her mind, and Nile took a deep breath and felt her heartbeat calm. “Thank you,” she said eventually.

Quỳnh put her hands down and smiled. “Any time.”

The first thread that Nile traced to its end led to a withered tree, that Quỳnh identified as one that had been a perfectly healthy young alder back when they’d first moved to the countryside. Nile lay a hand on its dry, cracked bark, and felt a spark of hot, sullen anger at all the lives that Stephen Merrick had blighted. Mostly she thought of Quỳnh and Andy and what the curse had taken from them, but the sight of the dying tree reminded her of the crops that had failed, the tenants who had left, the ones who remained who had struggled on out of loyalty and because the magicians could afford to see them through the hard times. It wasn’t just one family Merrick had hurt—it was ten square miles of countryside, and everything that lived there.

But of course these musings weren’t helping them find the necklace, so they traced another thread from Quỳnh’s curse to a sinkhole, and then another to a struggling patch of heather. It felt fumbling and slow, this wandering across the moors, but Quỳnh was patient and encouraging, telling Nile that she was memorizing all these dead ends so that Joe could map them out once they went back to the house.

The sky began to lighten from black to gray, and Nile looked up from the cracked rock the last cursed thread had led to and sighed. “I think we’re going to have to give it up for the night,” she said. “By the time we get back to the house, it’ll probably be past the time we agreed to meet Joe, Nicky, and Booker.”

“And you’re exhausted,” Quỳnh added. “I should have kept better track of the time, but this is all very exciting.”

“Not that exciting,” said Nile glumly. “We didn’t actually find anything.”

“No, but we ruled several places out!” said Quỳnh. “And that means that the next time we look, our search will be that much more focused.”

Wolf-Andy whined. Nile wasn’t sure whether that meant that she agreed or not.

They trudged back to the house, Quỳnh steering them around any swampy bits of land, and Nile thought with resignation that by the time they’d actually found what they were looking for, she’d probably know the lands of the estate as well as Andy and Quỳnh did. “Do you really think we’ll be able to, I don’t know, check off the threads that didn’t lead anywhere?” she asked as they walked. “There are so many of them, I’d think it would be terribly easy to forget which ones we’ve already looked at.”

“It’s been my experience,” said Quỳnh, “that each of the threads is really quite distinctive when you’re familiar with it. It takes time to learn the differences, of course, but the magic that connects a rock to the world around it isn’t the same at all as the magic that connects trees to the earth and the sunlight and the water in the air. Once you’ve had a little practice, I think you’ll be able to tell, say, that you’ve visited that rock to the south by looking at how the thread connects to the curse’s pattern. Give it a try now, take a look and see if you can pick out which threads we followed tonight.”

Nile stopped and closed her eyes, trying to clear her mind of disappointment and pick out the thread of the curse in the little cosmos of magic and feeling and light that was Quỳnh next to her. It was interesting to see Andy in wolf form in her magical vision as she trotted alongside Quỳnh—all of the things that made Andy _Andy_ were still there, but they were rearranged such that Nile could very well see how both women didn’t feel like themselves when they were in those forms.

She took a deep breath and tried to find the curse.

Of course, there were two of them, what with Andy and Quỳnh both there, and she imagined a comb untangling the magical threads that made up each of their curses as they overlapped and wrapped around each other, trying to isolate the lines in Quỳnh’s curse that they’d followed that night.

And then she stopped.

At the point where their magical auras blended, a thick rope of curse braided the two of them together. And it led back toward the house. “Quỳnh,” Nile said, “I, um, I think I might have something.”

“What is it?” asked Quỳnh sharply.

“Let me—”

They sped up their progress to the house, walking quickly and then running. Wolf-Andy seemed excited by the prospect of running alongside them, and she yipped happily as they followed the curse-cord back to the environs of the manor house.

“But we looked _everywhere_ in the house today,” Nile said, frustrated, as they reached the gravel drive.

Joe, Nicky, and Booker, were standing by the entryway, and they looked up at the women’s arrival. “You’re late,” Booker called. “It’s nearly sunrise!”

“We think the necklace is somewhere near the house,” Quỳnh called back. “Nile is tracing something.”

“What are you tracing?” asked Nicky, his eyebrows drawn together.

“It’s—um—it’s like the place where Quỳnh’s curse meets Andy’s?” Nile tried to explain. Nicky nodded as if this made perfectly good sense to him.

Joe frowned curiously. “Where is it going?”

“I don’t know,” Nile admitted. “But it’s getting thicker and stronger the closer we get to the house.”

“Buried in the yard somewhere?” Joe guessed.

“Perhaps,” Quỳnh said.

They followed as Nile pursued the thread, passing through the kitchen garden, around the stables and coach house, weaving in and out among the hedges, the urgency rising as the sky lightened and the moon began to sink. But they couldn’t stop now. Nile couldn’t stop now.

They pulled up short on the grass in front of the library window, and wolf-Andy threw back her head and _howled._ Everyone but Quỳnh jumped back, startled, and Nile looked at her in shock. “Is that a sign, do you think?”

“I don’t think we’re likely to get a better one,” said Quỳnh, her eyes alight with eagerness, and she fell to her knees on the earth and began digging with her bare hands.

“Oh, hold on,” said Booker. “I’ll go get a trowel.” He ran off to the shed while Andy, apparently taking her cue from her wife, began to paw at the earth and kick aside little piles of dirt.

Booker reappeared a minute later with not one but three gardening trowels of different sizes. There was only so much room, though, so Nile took a trowel and began to dig alongside Quỳnh and Andy while the men cleared the dirt out of the way. They’d dug a hole about a foot and a half deep into the earth when Nile hit something hard. “Oh—oh!” she exclaimed.

Though sunrise was clearly immanent and the sky more gray than black, Joe held a lantern over the hole in the ground, and they all let out a collective exhale at the glitter among the dark soil.

“That’s it,” Booker breathed as Nile brushed dirt from the necklace with her hand.

What a pretty little thing it was, Nile thought, to have caused so much trouble over the years. It shone with a delicate sheen, casting little sparkles of light into the dim early morning.

“The _library_ ,” Nicky muttered. “No wonder it has been such a burden over the years. It’s near the center of the curse.”

“Explains why we found Andy there, too, all those years ago,” Joe said, peering eagerly at it.

Nile was touching it now, her heart exulting. She wrapped her fingers around the thin silver chain, and _yanked_ , and—

And nothing. She pulled at it again, and again it refused to budge so much as an inch.

She frowned and sat back on her heels. “One of you try it,” she said. “I can’t make it move.”

“Hmm,” said Quỳnh, reaching her own dirt-covered hand back into the hole.

One by one, they tried to pull the necklace from the ground, but none of them managed it. They held the lantern to it to see if it had gotten caught on the root of a plant, or weighed down in some place by a rock, but it simply clung to the earth as if it had grown there, like a weed with deep, grasping roots.

“What the _hell_?” asked Nile.

Joe looked up at the sky and closed his eyes. “God damn it,” he said. “Kozak must have thought along the same lines you did, Quỳnh, about keeping the necklaces apart.”

“I suppose it’s one way to keep them from being brought together,” Quỳnh agreed. “To set one as a fixed point at the center of the curse and the other as a moving satellite. All Merrick has to do is make sure he never comes near Scythian Woods, and the spell will maintain itself.”

“So, what?” asked Booker, sounding as angry as Nile had ever heard him. “Are we back at the beginning? Trying and failing to catch Merrick?”

Quỳnh looked up, and her eyes were drawn toward the horizon. Nile followed her gaze to watch as the first rays of sunlight peeked over the gray line where the earth met the sky. “Sébastien,” said Quỳnh, “perhaps we can talk about this later.” And then, she—

Nile didn’t know what, exactly, Quỳnh did, or rather what was being done to her. It was like she was a mirage, her edges shimmering in the dim light. Andy howled, and Quỳnh made a pained noise, and Nile’s heart felt like it was breaking.

The men turned to face the other direction, doubtless to give Andy and Quỳnh their privacy, but Nile couldn’t make herself look away. The lines of Quỳnh’s body quivered, twitched into new shapes, shrunk, and Andy bulged and stretched and grew streamlined as fur melted away and her limbs reshaped themselves. The snout of the wolf shrunk, her skull reshaped itself, and Andy’s face appeared.

For a moment, Andy’s eyes met Quỳnh’s, and Andy gave her wife a tremulous smile. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but no sound came out, and Quỳnh’s expression twisted into a grimace, and she cried out.

It must have hurt terribly, thought Nile, looking at Quỳnh’s agonized face, and she wanted to hold her hand, or to let her and Andy squeeze at Nile’s hand until their pain stopped, but then Quỳnh’s cry became the croak of a raven, and she had no hands to squeeze.

The raven cawed once and flapped away, and Andy was curled naked in the dirt around the hole they had dug outside the library window. “Get her something to wear,” Nile ordered. She didn’t know which of the men left to get something—maybe all of them did—but she wasn’t paying attention to that, instead sitting next to Andy on the ground. Andy looked as if she wanted to cry, but her eyes were dry, staring at the necklace, her chest heaving.

“It’s all right,” said Nile, barely hearing her own words. “It’ll all be all right.” She hoped it wasn’t a lie.

Breakfast an hour or so later found everyone tired and demoralized. It should have been, if not a victory, something _like_ one. But the knowledge of yet another way in which the curse had constrained their courses of action weighed on all of them.

Andy looked up from her oatmeal, the dark circles under her eyes making it easy, for once, to believe that this woman was some thousands of years old. “I don’t know about you all,” she said, “but I’d frankly like to spend the day not thinking about the goddamned curse.”

“I like that idea,” said Joe.

Booker looked like he was ready to fall asleep in his own bowl of oatmeal, but nodded.

In the end, they all went to bed for the rest of the morning and didn’t wake up until the sun was high in the sky. When Nile awoke, she poked her head into the hall bath chamber. Finding it empty, she indulged in a hot bath. She’d already bathed once today, to get the dirt from the early morning dig out from under her fingernails and off of her hands and arms and face, but that had been a quick affair, ducking in after Joe and Nicky had gone in to wash each other and bathing herself efficiently so that Booker could come in and take a bath after her. Now, the water was hot for once, and she had the time, so she sank into the deep old tub and rested her head on its rim, letting the water caress her body and carry away the tenseness in her muscles.

After that, she went back to her room and read through the letters from Jay and Dizzy. They’d missed her; they wanted to know about the woman she worked for and what the job was; they were well, still sailing around the Middle Sea but out of battle these days, instead helping at various outposts bringing supplies and helping train new sailors. They hadn’t done any counterintelligence missions since Nile had left; Dizzy confided in her letter that she wasn’t sure she ever wanted to go on one again, and was thinking of finishing out her term in the navy and going home to work at her family’s shop. Nile understood that—though her memories of the event looked different in retrospect, knowing that she really _had_ died, but that she’d awakened to a new and mysterious life she could never have imagined before, she knew how traumatic it had been for her unit, her friends. She understood why Dizzy would be frightened at the prospect of something like that ever happening again.

Fear was a powerful motivator. Fear could change the course of a person’s life.

She lay the letters aside on her pillow, staring at the ceiling and thinking.

By the time she went downstairs again, she was much more awake, and she wasn’t surprised to find that the others were, as well—from the yard, she could hear the sound of Nicky and Joe beating dust out of the carpets, and Booker feeding the chickens, and Andy practicing with her axe.

“I have a thought,” she announced as she walked out into the garden.

“Uh-oh,” said Booker, and Andy rolled her eyes at him.

“What is your thought, Nile?” asked Nicky, setting down the woven wicker carpet beater he’d been wielding.

“We can’t bring the necklace that’s buried here to Merrick, so we have to find Merrick and bring him to the necklace to break the spell, right?”

“It certainly looks that way,” said Andy. “Which puts us right back into the boat we’ve been in from the start—the little bastard’s hard to catch.

Nile nodded. “Right. But Merrick _knows_ that the necklaces have to be kept apart for the spell to work, doesn’t he? That’s why he had Kozak install one of them permanently here, or maybe that was her idea and she told him about it, but at any rate, he has to _know_ that the spell will break if they’re together, right?”

“Certainly,” agreed Joe.

“So it would be really frightening for him if he were to, say, _see_ someone wearing the other necklace outside of Scythian Woods. Maybe it would startle him so badly that he’d make a mistake.”

“Yes,” said Andy slowly. “I suppose it would, if we could actually _get_ the other necklace from Scythian Woods.”

“We don’t _have_ to get the other necklace from Scythian Woods. If we had someone whose gift was to make identical copies of things out of thin air….” She turned to Booker. “We could let someone be seen with a _copy_ of the necklace. Merrick’s not a magician. If I understand correctly, he won’t know the difference, at least not from a distance.”

Nicky’s eyes grew wide, and he looked at Joe, his normal calm expression transformed to flustered excitement. “That could work, couldn’t it?”

There was a light in Joe’s eyes like a barely contained fire, both joyous and ready to let loose its anger. “I think it could.”

“How do we know it wouldn’t scare him off?” asked Booker. “If he knows the spell will be broken if the two necklaces come together, why would he risk approaching someone wearing the one he thinks should be here?”

“I suppose we _don’t_ know,” Nile said. “But if he’s made his fortune over the last forty years exploiting Andy and Quỳnh’s magic, surely he’ll want to at least _investigate_ if he thinks something’s happened to change the nature of the spell, which someone wearing the necklace outside of Scythian Woods would almost certainly mean. And if he’s traveling around with armed guards the way you describe, maybe he’ll get cocky enough to think that he can fix the spell himself, assuming that the person wearing the necklace isn’t Andy or Quỳnh.”

“He is certainly cocky,” said Nicky, and Joe nodded in agreement.

“Where would you want to do it?” asked Andy. Her tone was calm, as if she were reserving her judgment until she had heard the whole plan.

“Merrick’s obviously not going to come _here_ ,” said Nile, “and there’d be no way for us to publicly circulate images of the necklace from here anyway. But somewhere like the big city? Merrick goes there all the time, I’ve seen it in the scrapbook, to have investors’ meetings and go to fancy parties and demonstrate his products. There’s a multitude of newspapers there, and all we have to do is make it worth their while to write an illustrated article.”

“Oh, is that all,” Booker snorted. “Let me just remind everyone, the things I make don’t _last_. If I made one now, it would vanish by the time whoever wore it made it to the city.”

“All right,” said Nile. “You and I could go together—we could stay at my mother’s house. You could make the necklace there, right before we need it to be seen.”

“You realize we still need to come up with some situation in which we could be sure Merrick would see it,” Booker pointed out. “And then he would need to actually _come_ to the city, and he’d need to track us down, and then we’d need to be able to catch him and get him back here. That’s a lot of things that we’d need to plan and that would need to go right.”

“And there’s another problem,” said Joe. “If we plan this out, it sounds like it’ll be our best shot at catching Merrick—I’m not sure I’m comfortable about you two taking on that job alone. No offense, Nile,” he added. “But especially with your mother’s safety to consider, and given that the man travels with a small army….”

Nile hadn’t thought of that. She wouldn’t put her mother in danger for anything. But she wasn’t willing to give up her plan, either.

“Well, that’s simple enough,” Andy said matter-of-factly. “Joe, you and Nicky go with them. We’ll contact Copley, get him to set up some kind of event. Whatever it costs, I’ll pay it. And you stay in the city as long as it takes to get that bastard and bring him back here.”

Nicky frowned. “You’ll be alone.” The words were simple enough, but it wasn’t hard to see what Nicky meant—for almost forty years, Joe, Nicky, and Booker had worked to make sure that Andy and Quỳnh wouldn’t be left trapped in a house that would doubtless begin deteriorating rapidly without a family of magicians working tirelessly to keep it from falling apart.

The smile on Andy’s face was sad but determined. “Quỳnh and I have dealt with worse hardships, Nicky. We’ll be fine. And if it’ll break this spell? You know it’s worth it to us.” She looked one by one at each of their faces. “If we do this,” she said, “let’s do it right. I for one am sick to death of this nonsense.”

“My thoughts exactly,” said Joe. “I say we do it.”

“I think is maybe our best shot,” said Nicky slowly. “All right. Let us do it.”

Nile grinned, already tasting triumph. “And you know I’m in. Booker?”

Booker groaned and scratched at his beard, shaking his head. “Ugh. All right, if you think it’ll work, Andy, I’m in.”

“Excellent.” Andy’s sad smile took on an edge of viciousness, her eyes gleaming with a predator’s keenness, and Nile felt a quick stirring of lust alongside her eagerness. “Let’s set a trap, shall we?”


	9. Chapter 9

_Dear Miss Freeman and Lady Andromache,_

_I was most pleased and gratified to receive your letter. I think you will find the pretext I have arranged most suitable: a certain orphanage, many of whose inhabitants are the children of deceased soldiers, will receive so large a donation as to permit them to move to a larger, more suitable building and take on additional teachers and housekeeping staff. This will be a boon not only to the children, but to the neighborhood, which is experiencing greater than usual unemployment, and I believe the building about to be vacated by the orphanage could easily be remodeled into a small apartment building, which of course I shall inquire after if you’d like._

_So far as your desire for an event to mark the gift, I’ve arranged this as well: I myself will host the celebration, which will not only permit me to invite old friends and publicize it but will also establish the connection between the necklace in question and the inhabitants of Scythian Woods (I wager that Mr. Merrick keeps as close tabs on me as I do on him)._

_I enclose below the details, along with a list of potential dates for the celebration. If any of this should be unsatisfactory, I beg you will write to me at your earliest convenience. Give my regards to Mr. Jones, Mr. Smith, Mr. Booker, and our friend the raven._

_Yours sincerely,_

_James Copley_

How different, reflected Nile, was the journey back to the city from the one that had brought her to Scythian Woods originally. It was not only the company—Andrei could not have come along on this venture even had he been available, because between Joe, Nicky, Booker, and their baggage, there was scarcely room for them in the carriage—but also the new sense of purposefulness. This time, Nile was not simply riding _away_ from her life, to an unknown situation that held as much fear as possibility. This time, she was on a mission, and she was not alone.

This time, she carried with her the trust of two women she loved dearly.

Quỳnh had, of course, been apprised of their plans as soon as they had been finalized, and she had bid Nile farewell last night with a thunderously stupendous orgasm—as it turned out, her thousands of years on the earth had given her plenty of time to master the art of cunnilingus. Andy, in her usual way, had been more reserved about it, but before they’d set out in the morning, Andy had drawn her aside and placed a quick, warm kiss on her lips. “For luck, I suppose,” she’d said. “I hope this goes well, Nile. But however it goes, know that I’ll always be grateful that of all the people in the world, it was _you_ who joined us.”

Now, sitting in the carriage, she touched her lips and thought of the heat of Andy’s mouth on them. Sitting across from her, Nicky caught her eye and raised his eyebrows.

“What?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I hope this works. I wish every happiness for Andy and Quỳnh. And, of course, for you.”

She flushed and looked out the window, the familiar countryside unrolling behind her like a ball of yarn.

It was late afternoon by the time they reached Nile’s mother’s house, but not even near to darkness—the days were longer now as they sped toward midsummer. As the carriage stopped, Nile’s mother was already running out of the door, and Nile could scarcely get out of the carriage before her mother was squeezing her tightly in a welcoming embrace.

“Oh, Nile,” she breathed. “Look at you! You look wonderful!”

“I’m going to need to have my hair seen to before the party, my braids are getting untidy,” Nile demurred, and her mother clicked disapprovingly with her tongue.

“I’m not talking about that,” she said. “I’m talking about you standing up straight, looking happy and healthy and like you can meet my eyes.” She pulled back with one last pat to Nile’s shoulders. “Now introduce me with your friends, and Elijah can take their horses and cart down to the public stable.”

“There’s no need for that, ma’am,” said Joe, hopping off the carriage with his friendliest, most charming smile. “We don’t want to inconvenience you any more than we already are.”

“It’s no inconvenience!” Mrs. Freeman insisted. She squinted at him. “Now, you’ll be…Mr. Jones, the estate manager?”

“I will indeed!” said Joe cheerfully. “And this is my husband, Mr. Nicholas Smith, the housekeeper.”

“It’s a pleasure, Mrs. Freeman,” said Nicky, coming forward to shake Nile’s mother’s hand. “We have heard so much about you.”

“And I’ve heard a lot about you.” Mrs. Freeman smiled warmly at Nicky and Joe. “Thank you for taking care of my Nile.”

“I think she’s taken care of us more than we’ve taken care of her,” said Booker, standing up from where he’d been leaning against the carriage. “But at any rate we’ve been very happy and lucky to have her at Scythian Woods.”

Nile’s mother turned her smile on him; she’d always had a soft spot for people who spoke well of Nile and Elijah. “And _you_ must be Mr. Booker, then,” she said. “The one Mrs. Cartwright passes along all her gardening advice to! If it’s more annoying than helpful, just say the word, and I’ll stop writing it out. Lord knows she’s got a whole gardening club she can tell that stuff to.”

Booker smiled and took both of Nile’s mother’s hands in his own before releasing them. “Not at all,” he said. “It’s kind of nice to be able to talk with someone about the gardens, if only through other people’s letters.”

Part of the parameters of this particular mission involved keeping Joe, Nicky, and Booker indoors for the most part so as not to arouse the suspicions of Mr. Merrick or frighten him into flight, so they went indoors and got cleaned up before sitting down to an early supper.

To sit around the familiar dining room table and eat her mama’s meat loaf, rice and beans, and corn filled Nile with a powerful sense of comfort and _home_. The men all complimented her mother’s cooking effusively, and Nicky and Mrs. Freeman exchanged a few kitchen tips. Elijah, home on holiday from university, wanted to know all about Scythian Woods and its odd happenings, and Joe spun a tale about it that glossed over the curse and played up the eeriness, making it sound like a setting from a novel while being absolutely true. There was something odd but undeniably pleasant about seeing Nile’s family with the family of magicians who had taken her in as one of their own, the sense of worlds coming together and finding common ground.

Oddest of all was the conversation Booker and Nile’s mother seemed to be having as he hopped up to help her carry food from the kitchen. Nile couldn’t quite make out what they were saying, but Booker was smiling in a soft way she didn’t usually see from him, and Nile’s mother was eyeing Booker in a way that Nile had _never_ seen from her.

She leaned across the table. “Joe, Nicky,” she said, “is Booker _flirting_ with my mother?”

Nicky’s eyebrows were just about at his hairline as he looked over at Booker and Mrs. Freeman. “Quite possibly.”

“Huh,” said Elijah. “Mama hasn’t had a, um, _gentleman caller_ in years.”

“I don’t know if I’d necessarily call Booker a _gentleman_ ,” said Joe with a chuckle. “But I think they have a good bit in common. An interesting development, indeed.”

The next few days were a flurry of activity as they prepared for the celebration of the orphanage’s new building. The men couldn’t do much, stuck at the house as they were, but they were happy to take over the care of the Freeman household while Nile and her mother and brother helped over at Mr. Copley’s house.

It was interesting, being back in the city, getting her hair styled at the same place she’d gotten it done since she was a girl, shopping in the same markets her mother visited every weekend, smelling the familiar odors of the docks and the cries of the seagulls. It didn’t have the overwhelming sense of rightness that Nile had always associated with the word _home_ , but neither did it have the feeling of an ill-fitting garment, the way it had after she’d gotten out of the hospital and been shipped back to her mother’s house. It was more like a place she knew by heart and felt a nostalgic sense of affection for, but not one she would necessarily miss when she was gone.

On the night of the party, Booker, who had practiced half a dozen times back at Scythian Woods, tucked himself away in the spare bedroom he’d been sharing with Joe and Nicky and emerged fifteen minutes later with a perfect replica of the necklace.

“Oh, my, that’s gorgeous,” Nile’s mother exclaimed. “And that belongs to Lady Andromache, you said? You’re sure she doesn’t mind if Nile wears it?”

Booker shook his head, his eyes warm as he smiled at Mrs. Freeman. “She doesn’t mind at all,” he said. “It’ll suit Nile perfectly.”

Nile, who’d splurged on an expensive, fashionable dress in a vibrant, slightly pinkish red for the party, felt a bit like a dress-up doll as she fastened the false necklace around her neck. Though she _knew_ , intellectually, that it was only a construction of magic, more an illusion and a manipulation of light and matter in the air than an actual object, it _felt_ real. She put a hand to it, imagining what it would look like if _she_ were in a portrait alongside Andy and Quỳnh.

Mrs. Freeman put her hand to her heart as Nile turned around to face them, and Joe nodded with a smile. “Booker was right,” he said. “It does suit you.”

“You look beautiful, Nile,” said Nicky sincerely.

“What am I, chopped liver?” asked Elijah, who’d put on a new suit of his own for the event.

Nicky turned to him. “You look beautiful, too. I like your waistcoat.”

The waistcoat _wasn’t_ actually very flattering on Elijah, who had a taste for garish patterns and had picked out something in orange and purple paisley silk, but he was a handsome young man, thought Nile. The suit made him look older, more mature—a little like their father, actually. She straightened his tie and said, “You’ll do.”

As they readied the carriage for the Freemans to drive to Mr. Copley’s house, Booker leaned in to whisper in Nile’s ear. “Remember,” he said, “the necklace will last an hour, an hour and a half at the outside. If your worried that Copley’s reporters haven’t drawn you with it by then, call a taxi and come back, and I’ll make you another one.”

“I know the plan, Booker.” But she lay a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it encouragingly. She thought that, even after all their time more or less stuck at Scythian Woods, it was very difficult for Joe, Nicky, and Booker to stay behind now, when they were so close to their goal. “Thank you,” she said.

He smiled crookedly at her. “Good luck.”

Mr. Copley’s house seemed very large for a man who lived alone, a fine brick townhouse in a good neighborhood, with lights shining from all the windows in the warm summer evening. It seemed he had more connections than Nile had really realized, because the house was full of laughing, chattering people as Nile and her brother and mother came in, some dressed in rich, fashionable clothes and some who seemed more like they came from the Freemans’ sort of neighborhood.

As soon as they arrived, Mr. Copley came over to greet them. “Mrs. Freeman, Miss Freeman, Mr. Freeman, so lovely to see you again,” he said, as if they hadn’t met him just yesterday to discuss his catering plans. To Nile, he said in a low voice, “Miss Freeman, I have the information you requested.” He indicated a portfolio full of papers that he held in one hand.

“Thank you, Mr. Copley,” she said. “If you’ll keep it for me until the end of the evening, I’ll bring it back with me.”

Though she knew that the party really only existed as an excuse for her to get seen wearing the necklace, Nile found herself enjoying it. After so long with only the men and Andy and Quỳnh for company, with the occasional visit to one of the tenants, she felt her spirits lifting at getting to meet new people, and talk to neighbors to catch them up on her life, and drink fine wine and eat fancy little appetizers that Mr. Copley’s undoubtedly expensive caterers had prepared.

In the background of her awareness, she noticed the newspaper reporters and their illustrators, quiet men and women on the outskirts scribbling at their sketchpads or notebooks, gregarious ones chatting with the partygoers and asking them questions. A pretty young woman with a notebook asked Nile about her work for Lady Andromache, and why the lady had chosen to sponsor the city orphanage, and Nile went on for a bit about Lady Andromache’s sense of social responsibility and care for the family of veterans. She thought it sounded pretty good, which was just as well, because after the pretty young reporter was done with her, an elderly man with spectacles and a quiet shadow carrying a sketchpad cornered her to ask her roughly the same questions the first reporter had.

After half a dozen of these conversations, she caught her mother in the corner of the room, staring at her with an unreadable glint in her eye, and she excused herself from the man she was talking to and drew her mother aside into Mr. Copley’s parlor. He had marked it as off-limits to the party guests, and so it would be a good place for a private conversation.

“What is it, Mama?” she asked once she’d closed the door behind them.

Her mother sat down on Mr. Copley’s sofa, drawing Nile down after her, and fixed her with a firm glance. “Charity is all well and good, baby, and I’m glad to see you getting involved. But there’s something you’re not telling me, isn’t there?”

 _There are **many** things I’m not telling you, Mama_, Nile thought, but she affected an innocent expression and said, “What do you mean?”

“Don’t you give me that, Nile Freeman,” said her mother. “It didn’t fool me when your brother broke the window playing ball, and it doesn’t fool me now. Why is it you’re so eager to talk to reporters? Why is it that Mr. Smith, Mr. Booker, and Mr. Jones are hiding out in my spare bedroom right now? If this is some—some money laundering scheme, or some such—”

“No!” Nile exclaimed, then lowered her voice. “No, Mama, it’s nothing like that.”

“What happened to Lady Andromache’s necklace?” Mrs. Freeman’s voice was stern, and Nile’s hand flew to her throat in sudden panic, before she remembered—right, the necklace was a magical counterfeit, it was always going to vanish. Hopefully the newspaper illustrators had captured it before it disappeared.

Her mother’s face softened then. “Nile, honey, please, just tell me what’s going on. You know that anything I can do to help you, you only have to ask. But don’t lie to me.”

Nile closed her eyes, something tight pinching at her heart. She’d never actually _asked_ Andy or Quỳnh or any of the others whether she could tell her family about her magic. But it had seemed implicit to her that it was dangerous. One only had to look at what had happened when Booker had revealed Andy and Quỳnh’s gift to know of the risks that came from having magic when having magic was so rare that the Stephen Merricks of the world would go to such lengths to control it.

But Nile’s mother wasn’t Stephen Merrick. And surely she’d want to know why her daughter wasn’t getting any older as the years went by. Nile didn’t want to end up isolated the way her magician family had been. She didn’t want her mother to go through life wondering why her daughter had become so distant.

In an instant, she’d made her decision. “Mama,” she said, “I’m going to show you something very important. And you have to promise me that you won’t tell anyone.”

“Is it dangerous?” asked her mother, her eyebrows forming a worried line.

It could be, perhaps, but it wouldn’t be to Nile’s mother, not if she could help it. “Not the way you’re thinking,” she said.

“All right.” Her mother nodded. “I promise.”

Nile looked around the room for something to demonstrate on. There was a little vase sitting on a table next to the chaise longue in the parlor, a delicate little ceramic thing with a spray of lavender flowers painted on it. It didn’t have anything in it; it was probably too small to hold anything anyway, just a decorative little object. Nile stood up and lifted the thing in her hand, then hurled it to the ground.

“Nile!” her mother exclaimed, shocked, and Nile held her finger her lips.

“Shh, it’s all right. Look.” She closed her eyes and felt for the lines of magic that connected the pieces of the vase to each other, even now. She could see in her mind how the thing looked when it was whole, how each part fit together with its neighbors. Working quickly, she put the vase back together, smoothing over the cracks until they vanished, and then handed the vase to her mother. “Look,” she said again. “It’s fine. I fixed it.”

Mrs. Freeman stared at her daughter, and then at the vase. She felt it, held it close to her eyes to examine it more closely, and then looked up at Nile again. “Nile,” she said, her tone soft with wonder. “What did you do?”

“It’s magic, Mama.” She sat back down on the sofa next to her mother. “Magic still exists, and I have it.”

Nile’s mother set the vase on the floor in front of them and stared at again. “Magic,” she repeated.

“There’s so much more to it than that,” Nile said. “I’m only just learning to use it. But I think I’ll be able to do a lot of good with it once I’ve mastered it. I can use it to help people. And that’s what I’m doing now.” She didn’t think she could say more than that without giving away Andy and Quỳnh, and Nicky and Joe and Booker. But she could say that much, and every word of it was true.

A silence fell, Nile’s mother simply staring at her without saying anything, and Nile began to feel a touch nervous. What would she say if her mother accused her of lying, of pulling some parlor trick? If she thought Nile had lost her mind? Or worse, what if her mother was _afraid_ of her? “Mama…” she began, her voice breaking.

“Nile,” her mother said, her voice quiet but full of solid, affectionate warmth. “Oh, Nile, I am so proud of you.”

Nile swallowed a lump in her throat, and let her mother draw her in close, stroking a hand over her carefully arranged braids and pressing a kiss to her forehead. “I was so worried for so long, honey,” she said. “Nothing seemed to interest you. Nothing seemed to make you happy. But to see you so confident in yourself, and talking about using your gifts to help people and do good? I always knew you were special, Nile. I always knew it, and I was right.”

Tears pricked at Nile’s eyes. She loved her mother so much, she felt as if her heart would overflow. “You can’t tell anyone about the magic, Mama,” she said. “Nobody believes in it anymore, and people might want to—to use it for wickedness.”

She could feel her mother nodding. “I won’t tell anyone,” she said. “Not ever. You take your gifts and you do good with them, and don’t you worry about me.”

They sat like that for a long time, until Nile said, “You think we ought to check on Elijah?”

Mrs. Freeman sighed. “We probably should,” she said. “On the off-chance that these fancy people don’t want to hear every single detail of the latest novel he’s writing.”

Nile laughed, and took a moment to savor the wonderful sensation of loving and being loved.

The week or so following the party was a bit less pleasant, as Nile, Joe, Nicky, and Booker were all waiting on tenterhooks to see if Merrick would snatch at the bait they had offered. Mrs. Freeman and Elijah didn’t know the exact details of what they were waiting for—Nile had simply explained to them that they were trying to catch out someone who’d done Lady Andromache a tremendous wrong—but they, too, felt the others’ impatience, and their worry over Andy and Quỳnh being alone. Andy had sent a vague, brief little missive two days after the party, telling them that everything at Scythian Woods was fine, but the lack of detail wasn’t especially reassuring, and Joe had frowned at it for a long moment before saying, “Well, if she needed us, I don’t think she’d hide it from us.”

That wasn’t terribly reassuring, either.

Nile couldn’t criticize, though. It was difficult for the men to fill their days without going outside and potentially being seen by Merrick, and she sympathized with how stifling and frustrating their situation was. They managed as best they could--Booker and Elijah had practically begun a little reading circle exchanging recommendations for mystery novels and Gothic romances, and according to Elijah, Booker gave very helpful feedback on Elijah’s own novel; Joe was drawing up a storm, producing portraits of everyone in the house, for which he was beginning to put together plans to convert them into more formal paintings; Nicky had read his way through Elijah’s poetry collection and was doing his best to help in the kitchen without imposing on Mrs. Freeman’s patience. Nile, meanwhile, spent her days catching up with old acquaintances, checking in with Mr. Copley about any news and reviewing the information he had given her, and practicing sensing things with her magic.

It was an odd kind of limbo they were all in, and Nile could barely sleep at night for wondering how it would end.

They were sitting in Mrs. Freeman’s parlor one night in their usual configuration: Nicky and Joe on the settee, Mrs. Freeman and Booker sitting next to each other in the armchairs, and Elijah and Nile playing cards at the table. The night was warm and pleasant, and Nile was enjoying a glass of homemade lemonade, courtesy of Nicky, who was practicing all of the recipes Mrs. Freeman had shared with him. Booker and her mother were chatting in low voices, and Nile tried not to think too hard about her mother stepping out with a man who was over two hundred and fifty years old, since she’d given her own heart to two women who’d been ancient before the country Nile lived in had even existed.

All in all, things were very ordinary, for the values of ordinary they’d become accustomed to over the last week.

Suddenly, Joe set down his pencil. “Nicky,” he said.

Nicky looked up from his book and leaned over to peer at his husband’s sketchbook. Nile cast a glance over at them, and her heart beat faster as Nicky’s eyes widened and he let out a sharp breath.

“What is it?” asked Booker, and Joe beckoned him and Nile over.

As soon as she saw what Joe had drawn, she immediately knew why he’d called them. The background of the drawing was clearly identifiable as the Freemans’ front door; Nile could see the window box with her mother’s flowers in it and the parlor furniture faintly sketched behind the window. A man stood in the foreground of the drawing, not knocking at the door, but hovering around outside of it, an expensive-looking coach half visible on the left-hand margin of the drawing. But none of this was what had likely made Joe stop and call the rest of them to look at it. Nile had stared at countless newspaper illustrations of Stephen Merrick’s face, and she knew it well enough to instantly identify the man that Joe had drawn outside her mother’s door.

“He’s coming,” she breathed.

Joe nodded. “I don’t know when,” he said. “Perhaps he’s already on his way.”

“Who?” Elijah asked. “The man you’ve been hanging around waiting for? How do you know?”

“Mind your own business, Elijah,” said Mrs. Freeman mildly, but her eyes were sharp as she looked over at the cluster of magicians around the settee, and Nile had a sneaking suspicion that she hadn’t done as well at keeping the men’s secret as she’d hoped.

For the next day, they planned—talking to Copley, working out how they would manage getting Merrick out of town without being detected, impressing upon Mrs. Freeman and Elijah that Merrick and his men were dangerous, and not to be trifled with.

“Are we talking about the same man?” Mrs. Freeman asked, eyes wide. “Henry Merrick, the miracle cures man?”

“That’s him,” said Booker. “And I really don’t know that I’d call what he does ‘miracle cures.’”

“Does it have to do with magic?” asked Nile’s mother.

Joe looked at Nile in mild surprise, and then said to Mrs. Freeman, “It does. Is that a subject you have much familiarity with?”

“Enough that I’d like to know what this man has done and just why it is you think he’s so bad,” said Mrs. Freeman firmly.

 _That_ made for a rather long conversation.

Fortunately, however, they didn’t have long to wait after that. Two days after Joe had drawn Merrick’s arrival, Nile saw the fancy coach from the sketch rounding the corner from her bedroom window, and she raced down the stairs to announce it to the rest of the household.

By the time the knock at the door came, they were ready.

Nile let out a gust of air, stood up straight, and opened the door. “Hello?” she said, as if she had no idea who Merrick was.

Henry—Stephen—Merrick was an oily-looking man, with wavy dark hair, close-set blue eyes, and rather large ears. He was a little taller than Nile, and he looked only a little older, but Nile knew by now how deceptive looks could be when it came to magic and age. He was flanked on either side by large, fierce-looking men, his bodyguards, she supposed, and they dwarfed him. If one looked very closely, one could just see the glint of a silver chain around his neck.

A smile rose unbidden to Nile’s lips, but she repressed it.

Stephen Merrick favored her with a smarmy smile as he took her in, but his eyes remained cold. “Do I have the honor of speaking to Miss Nile Freeman?”

“You do,” she said, allowing a note of polite suspicion to enter her voice. “And may I ask who _you_ are?”

He looked mildly put-out at not being known on sight, but he recovered his composure easily enough and said, “My name is Henry Merrick, and I’m in the medical business. I heard about your, ah, your employer’s generous donation to the Grandview Home for Children recently, and I thought I might see if my company’s sponsorship might be welcome. We’re always looking for an opportunity to do a little good in the world,” he added sententiously.

 _Like hell you are_. Nile put on the best facsimile of an eager smile she could muster, and she opened the door a little wider. “Of course,” she said. “We’d welcome any help you’d be generous enough to offer. Please, come in. My mother will make us some tea.”

“Why, thank you,” said Merrick, his smile widening. “Ah, might we include my associates here in our conversation? I assure you, I trust absolutely in their discretion.”

Nile looked dubiously at the bodyguards—she thought that would be a reasonable response even if you _weren’t_ au courant with Merrick’s less-than-savory side—and said evenly, “Of course, any associates of yours are welcome.”

She left Merrick and his two guards sitting in the parlor and went back to the kitchen, where her mother was setting out biscuits and Nicky was brewing tea.

“That’ll make them fall asleep?” she asked, looking at the tea. “Quickly?”

“Quickly and not very pleasantly,” said Nicky, anger visible around the edges of his calm expression. “Unfortunately, I think they’re all about to be plagued by fits of conscience in their sleep.”

Mrs. Freeman gave him an interested, mildly suspicious look. “You’re going to have to teach me _that_ recipe for tea.”

“We sent Elijah for Copley,” said Booker. “He should have the carriage ready.”

Nile nodded, waiting for her mother and Nicky to finish arranging the tea tray, and then she carried the refreshments out to Merrick and his men.

“Ah, Miss Freeman,” said Merrick with another of his oily smiles. “This looks…” he peered at the tea tray. “Lovely,” he finished in a tone someone might use to say _quaint—completely inadequate, but it’s adorable that you tried._ Nile valiantly resisted grinding her teeth. She handed Merrick a cup of tea and let him take a biscuit. After giving tea to the henchmen, she sat down on the chair across from Merrick’s.

“You’d mentioned an interest in donating to the Grandview Home?” she asked. “It’s a cause very dear to my heart—my father was in the navy and died when I was young. If there’s anything I can tell you about Lady Andromache’s support or the plans for the new orphanage building, I’m happy to answer any questions.”

“Yes,” Mr. Merrick, sipping his cup of tea. Nile watched keenly as he swallowed. “Lady Andromache’s support. This would be Lady Andromache of Scythian Woods, yes?”

“Why, do you know her, Mr. Merrick?” asked Nile, feigning surprise. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the henchmen sipping their tea.

Something hard, greed or anger or fear, twitched at the corner of Merrick’s thin lips. “You might say we’re old friends,” he said evenly. “I’d no idea she’d taken on a new…lady’s companion, was it?”

Nile hoped the intensity of her focus didn’t show on her face. How quickly would Nicky’s potion work? Would it happen gradually, or would Merrick keep over all at once. “I understand she’s been reluctant to take on new help. I feel very fortunate that she took a chance on offering me the position.”

“Hmm, yes.” Merrick blinked, frowning, as if something was bothering him, then he visibly cleared his expression of any disturbance. “Lady Andromache had quite a fine collection of…curiosities, we might say, back when we ran in similar circles. Antiques, curios from far-off lands, some very interesting jewelry. Does she still keep any of it around?”

“I’m sure I couldn’t say, Mr. Merrick,” said Nile, aiming for ‘primly disapproving.’ “Of course Scythian Woods is a very well-appointed house, but I don’t make a habit of inquiring after my employer’s hobbies.”

Merrick nodded. “Quite right, quite right.” He squeezed his eyes together and made a face as if he’d been sucking lemons. “Listen, Miss Freeman, I seem to be feeling a bit….”

“A bit…?” Nile encouraged.

His eyes opened again, wider this time, and his face scrunched into a petulant scowl. “Why, you sneaky little bitch,” he got out, before collapsing against the chair back.

“What the—” Henchman #1 got up, but, apparently too faint to manage it, sat back down in his chair, his limbs splayed every which way. Henchman #2 wasn’t so lucky; he stood up before falling flat on his face on the floor.

“Mind who you call a bitch, you bastard,” Nile muttered. “Joe? Nicky? Booker?” She didn’t want to raise her voice too loudly, but nor did she want to leave Merrick and his men alone in the parlor, in case the sleeping potion failed and they roused again.

The men appeared in the doorway. They were trailed by Mrs. Freeman, whose eyes widened at the scene in the parlor. In a trice, Booker, Nicky, and Joe each had Merrick or a henchmen slung over his shoulder, and they made their way toward the back door.

“Is Copley’s carriage here?” Nile asked.

“Should be momentarily—ah!” Joe exclaimed as not one, but two carriages pulled up in the alleyway. Elijah hopped from the driver’s seat of one; James Copley descended more sedately from the other.

“I thought,” he explained, “that if, in addition to the five of us and Mr. Merrick, we were to take any additional guests with us to Scythian Woods—such as the men you’re currently carrying—it was bound to get rather cramped riding in one carriage.”

“A good thought,” Nicky conceded. He hefted Henchman #2, who was larger than he was—and Nicky wasn’t exactly a small man—a little more securely over his shoulder.

Joe nodded. “Right,” he said. “Nicky and I will take Merrick and Nicky’s friend over there in one carriage—Nile, Booker, you and Copley handle Booker’s guest.”

Nile thought about commenting on the fact that this distribution would leave two of their party to guard two enemies and three of their party to guard one, but then, James Copley was an elderly man, and Nile herself didn’t especially want to be in a carriage with Merrick, so she nodded.

Booker shifted under the weight of his own captive and said to Nile’s mother, “After we’ve gone, contact the police. Remember the story—Nile left this morning, Mr. Merrick dropped by to discuss the charity event, and he was kidnapped by a party of armed men. You don’t know who they are.”

The expression on Mrs. Freeman’s face was troubled as she nodded. “I remember. Listen, you aren’t going to…to _kill_ them, or anything, are you?”

Joe sighed. “We have no plans to, ma’am. But if they try to hurt us, or anyone else, then I make no promises.”

Mrs. Freeman accepted this with a dip of the head. “Fair enough.”

Elijah’s eyes were wide. “What an adventure!” he said softly. “Nile, write as soon as you get back, tell us what happens!”

“I will.” She looked at her family home, her mother, her brother, and hoped she remembered this moment, knowing that whatever happened with Merrick, her life would be far different the next time she saw them. “Thank you,” she said. “For…for everything.”

Her mother drew Nile in for an embrace, and Nile held her close. “You take care of yourself,” her mother said in a low voice, close to her ear. “I love you. Good luck, and be safe.”

“I’ll do my best, Mama,” Nile murmured, then pulled away. The men were maneuvering Merrick and his goons into the carriages, and they needed to move quickly, before they attracted attention. Even in back alleys, the city was full of eyes and ears. “I’ll write,” she promised.

“You’d better,” said Nile’s mother.

Nile climbed into the carriage and sat across from Mr. Copley. Booker was in the driver’s seat, Merrick’s henchman on the floor. She could hear Booker urging the horses on, and the carriage started to move. The back window of Mr. Copley’s carriage was small, but she still watched her mother and brother until the horses rounded a corner and they began their trip back out of the city.

Nicky’s potion must have done the trick, because the henchman was unconscious the whole time. Nile still wasn’t sure what they planned to do with them after Merrick’s curse was broken, but she supposed there was time to think about that. She made awkward small talk with Mr. Copley for a while, but when the conversation came around to Nile’s magic, she fell quiet and looked out the window instead. She knew Mr. Copley meant well, was working to help get Andy and Quỳnh out of the mess he’d gotten them into, but that didn’t mean she wanted to share something so dear and new and still-mysterious with him.

She fell asleep at some point during the ride; when she woke again, the sun was just beginning to sink toward the western horizon, and they were pulling up the familiar gravel drive in front of Scythian Woods.

The house looked the worse for wear, Nile noted. In the two weeks or so they’d been gone, it looked like rain had taken out a good number of tiles on the roof, and even some of the windows on the upper story. The hedges had gotten overgrown again, and one of the gutters was hanging down, dripping filthy water down the front of the house. Nile still couldn’t help but smile, especially when she noticed the tall figure standing by the door, leaning against an axe with a raven on her shoulder.

As they came to a stop and began getting out of the carriages, she stepped forward to greet them, her eyes guarded. “Well?”

Nile, her stiff legs a little wobbly after the day-long carriage ride, stood up straight and gave Andy what she imagined was a huge grin. “We did it! We got them!”

Andy’s smile spread slowly across her face, the shadows receding from her eyes. “Well done,” she said. She shook her head, her whole manner becoming brighter and more open like a flower unfurling under the sun’s beams. “Well _done_ , everybody.” She looked from one carriage to the other, and her smile shrunk a bit, becoming harder. “Where’s Merrick?”

Nicky and Joe dragged him out of the carriage between the two of them, dropping him at the ground in front of Andy like a pair of cats bringing her a dead mouse. “You didn’t kill him already?” she asked, sounding disappointed at the prospect.

Nicky shook his head. “Sleeping potion. I brought the antidote with me, though.” He pulled a flask out of the pocket of his jacket and crouched down by Merrick’s face. Pinching the man’s nose shut, he waited for his mouth to open and then poured the contents of the flask down his throat.

The effect was almost instantaneous. Merrick sputtered awake, choking and looking frantically from side to side. As he took in the group of people surrounding him, his lip curled with angry contempt.

“ _You_ again!”

“‘You again,’ he says, as if he hasn’t been stealing from me, from _us_ , for almost forty years.” Andy laughed bitterly. “Welcome back to Scythian Woods, Merrick. I hope you like what we’ve done with the place.”

Merrick’s eyes found her axe and widened. He scrambled away from her. “You’re not going to kill me,” he said, but under the bravado was an audible current of fear.

“Oh, really?” asked Andy.

Booker’s mouth curved into a considering moue. “Can you think of a reason she shouldn’t?”

“I can’t,” said Joe, his voice hard, and Nicky nodded in agreement, never taking his eyes from Merrick.

“It would be poetic justice,” he said. “For you to lose your life here, where you have stolen life from so many others.”

“ _Stolen_?” Merrick tried to laugh scornfully, but he didn’t pull it off well. “Well, what were _you_ doing with it? Silly little scams on local landlords? Magical assassinations? Some mamby-pamby do-gooder schemes? I _cure_ people. I’ve cured _thousands_ of them. I’ve done _far_ more good with magic than you ever could, and made far better use of my time.”

“What the hell would you know about doing good?” asked Andy. “You think you’ve _cured_ people? Nile, tell him.”

Nile stepped forward and pulled the portfolio Mr. Copley had given her. “Ten years ago, David Talbot. Your ‘curative serum’ made him awake from a coma. It was in all the newspapers worldwide—everyone was hailing it as a miracle. Two days later, an earthquake brought down the hospital he was in, killing him and two dozen other people.” She flipped open to the newspaper articles in question. “Eight years ago, Sophie Lebeau. She was dying of tuberculosis before her mother went to one of your demonstrations and managed to get her in as a test subject for one of your ‘all-purpose healing injections.’ She got better. But her mother died of a heart attack a week later.” Another story. “Three years ago. Andrew Martin. He suffered from chronic pain, but your ‘medicative ointment’ made the pain go away. First his wife got sick. Then his oldest child, a son. Then his daughter. By the time his pain came back, at the end of the year, his entire family had died.”

Merrick swallowed heavily, his eyes fixed on the portfolio. “I can’t be blamed for that. Bad things _happen_ , that’s life.”

Disgust rose in Nile’s throat. “Bad things just _happen_ in patterns whenever someone actually gets to use your overpriced ‘miracle cures,’” she said harshly.

“You played with forces you didn’t understand,” said Andy, her voice implacably cold. “There’s always a price to pay when you manipulate life and death, and Quỳnh and I know that. But you? You threw a rock though a glass window, and expected the people you left behind to pick up the pieces after you knocked the world around them out of balance.”

In the red glow of the sinking sun, the necklace around Merrick’s neck, which had been knocked out from under his shirt when Joe and Nicky threw him from the carriage, began to shine with an unearthly light. Everyone’s eyes caught on it, Merrick’s included.

“No,” he protested, softly at first, as if the idea had only just occurred to him, and then louder, “no! No, you can’t just _take it back_!”

“Again,” said Nicky, “you do not make a very compelling argument.”

“Probably fooled himself into thinking he’s so smart he doesn’t actually _need_ to make a good argument,” Joe agreed.

“Hold him still, boys,” Andy ordered.

Joe and Nicky each grabbed an arm, while Booker stood behind Merrick, gripping his shoulders to keep him from wriggling away. With one quick yank, Andy pulled the necklace from off his neck. As the sun’s rays fell over her face, she winced, the edges of her body becoming less defined.

“Hold on, Andy,” Nile said, rushing to support her. “Hold on just a moment longer.”

Slinging Andy’s arm around her shoulder, she helped her walk over to the hole they’d dug outside the library window. The other necklace still lay there at the bottom, untouched, gleaming in the dying light and beginning to emit a strange, low, humming sound that made Nile’s teeth hurt.

The raven cried out and leapt from Andy’s shoulder just as Andy lost her grip on the other necklace and dropped it into the hole.

A blinding flash of light like a star exploding made Nile screw her eyes shut and throw her arm up in front of her face, and under her feet, the earth shook, and she thought she heard the foundations of Scythian Woods groan. In Nile’s magical vision, a thousand threads of twisted curse lines frayed and disintegrated, collapsing into sparkling particles of power that dissipated into the general background of magic that hovered around the manor house. Somewhere, Merrick screamed, but Nile ignored him. Somewhere else, a wolf’s howl and a raven’s croak mingled with human groans of pain.

After a small eternity, the light faded, leaving only brightly colored afterimages on the back of Nile’s eyelids, and tentatively, she opened her eyes.

Andy and Quỳnh were curled naked, facing each other, on either side of the hole where the necklaces had lain. Both were human, their bodies cast into shadow by the gloom of the early night. Not far from them, a shriveled, wizened body lay, its thin, wiry arm extended in Quỳnh and Andy’s direction. Nile blinked in horror at what she assumed had once been Stephen Merrick. As she watched, the body collapsed into a pile of dust, and before her eyes, little yellow and blue flowers began to push their way through it, blossoming as quickly as if they had been ready for this very moment for ages and had only been waiting for it to arrive.

Joe and Nicky were there in an instant, taking their jackets off to drape around Quỳnh and Andy’s shoulders as they struggled to sit up.

Quỳnh wrapped Nicky’s jacket more securely around herself and looked over at Andy. “Well, hello, you,” she said.

“Hello,” said Andy. “Long time, no see.”

They stared at each other in silence, and then they were collapsing into each other’s arms, burying their faces in each other’s hair, their shoulders heaving with silent sobs. Nile felt a suspicious wetness on her own cheeks, and she raised a hand to touch her face and found it covered in tears.

In the east, the moon poked its head over the horizon, and, apparently as overcome with emotion as everyone else, shed its light in a stream of silver that softened Scythian Woods’s flaws and bathed its inhabitants in a comforting glow.


	10. Chapter 10

“The spell did give him long-lasting youth,” Quỳnh was explaining, “but it wasn’t natural—as soon as the spell was broken, his body rejected all the foreign magic that had been preserving it.”

Mr. Copley nodded thoughtfully, looking with slightly dismayed fascination at the patch of blooming flowers where Stephen Merrick’s body had fallen.

They’d spent the night in Scythian Woods, which had lost its aura of sinking decay, though it was still in unbelievably poor repair, considering that its staff had only been gone for two weeks. In the morning, Nicky had made breakfast as normal, and the surreal nature of it-- Quỳnh and Andy sitting at the table together, unable to keep from staring into each other’s eyes, Mr. Copley awkwardly sipping his coffee in the previous day’s clothing, the henchmen tied in the corner having been promised breakfast if they behaved themselves—made Nile a little dizzy.

Mr. Copley was headed back to the city now, taking the chastened henchmen with him. Andy and Quỳnh had managed to extract promises from them that they’d keep quiet about the fate of their employer, and the undisguised horror and fear with which they’d reacted to the explanation of just what that fate _was_ made Nile inclined to believe them.

“Well, Copley,” Andy said, “I can’t say I’ve enjoyed our acquaintance, but I’m grateful for your help. We really couldn’t have broken the curse without you. As far as I’m concerned, consider your debt to us paid.”

“Much obliged, Lady Andromache,” said Mr. Copley with a nod. “I’m glad to have been able to help.” He looked around at the ruinous estate, and his expression went even more solemn than usual. “I’m just sorry that it took so long.”

Quỳnh shrugged philosophically. “All things happen in their time, I suppose. Nothing could have been solved before our Nile was ready.” She favored Nile with a warm smile.

After Mr. Copley bid them all farewell, Booker took in the damage the house had suffered in their absence and groaned. “God, what a mess,” he said. “It’s going to take forever to fix that roof.”

Andy and Quỳnh exchanged glances, and then Andy shot Booker a quizzical look. “Book,” she said, “you know you don’t have to stay and fix the roof, don’t you?”

Booker opened his mouth as if to say something and then closed it again, caught off-guard. Nicky and Joe, who had been standing off to one side looking at the fresh green of a patch of the lawn that had been dead when they’d left, turned to look at Andy and Quỳnh.

Quỳnh gestured them over, and they went, standing next to Booker and waiting patiently.

“Oh, my brothers,” said Quỳnh, looking at the three of them with aching tenderness. “How lucky Andromache and I have been. How _grateful_ we are to have had such steadfast friends at our sides through all of these trials.”

“No need to be grateful.” Joe rubbed at his nose in such a way that Nile suspected he was doing it to hide the fact that he was tearing up. “You know we wouldn’t have been anywhere else.”

Andy nodded. “We do know,” she said. “We also know that it’s been _decades_ since you and Nicky have gotten to be alone together on a sunny beach somewhere. Don’t tell me you haven’t been itching for that for years, because I won’t believe you.”

“You think we would go sit on a beach while you needed us?” asked Nicky, his eyes looking suspiciously red.

Andy leaned in and touched her forehead to his, and then to Joe’s. “I think we’ll be all right, boys,” she said softly. “You can go now.” Stepping back again, she cleared her throat and said in a steadier voice, “Now shoo. I don’t want to see your faces for a _year_ at least.”

“Can we pack first?” asked Joe with a crooked, watery smile. “We do have rather a lot of books in the library.”

“Yes, all right,” said Andy, rolling her eyes. “You can leave tomorrow. And you, Book!”

“What about me?” asked Booker. “You think I should go to the beach, too?”

“We think you should go wherever will make you happy, Sébastien.” Quỳnh lay a hand on the side of his face, stroking his cheek gently. “Perhaps…back to the city, to get to know Mrs. Freeman a little better?”

As strange as Nile found the idea of Booker becoming her stepfather, she couldn’t help but be amused at his surprise. She hadn’t thought she’d told Quỳnh enough about what had happened in the city for her to know about her mother’s flirtation with Booker, but Quỳnh was evidently sharp enough to read between the lines.

The men went back into the house, to pack, to survey the damage to the house that had happened while they were away, probably to try and convince themselves that the damage wasn’t their problem anymore. Nile was left alone with Andy and Quỳnh on the front lawn.

She swallowed. It would be childish to cry _What about me?_ She thought she might actually burst into tears, though, if Andy and Quỳnh gently suggested that she take herself off somewhere so that the two of them could reacquaint themselves with each other. It was selfish, she knew—no one deserved the chance to be together more than Andy and Quỳnh. And yet, the thought of being left behind as her new family scattered to the winds, as the women she loved found their happiness again without her, broke her heart just a little bit.

“Oh, we’re going to have our work cut out for us with this house,” Andy said, standing back with her hands at her hips to look at it.

Nile looked over at her in surprise. “You’re going to _stay_ here?”

Quỳnh snorted out a laugh. “Not forever,” she said. “Hopefully not for very long, because I will admit I am _profoundly_ sick of this place. But we’ll need to fix it up before its new owner can take over.”

“Oh?” Nile couldn’t imagine who would actually _buy_ Scythian Woods, but it made perfect sense to her that they’d want to sell the place.

Andy nodded. “We’re giving the house to Celeste Moreau,” she said. “She thinks she can make it into a hospital, and I’m willing to take her word for it. She knows all about that modern medicine…stuff. It’ll be great for the neighborhood, since there’s not a doctor right now in a thirty-mile radius.”

“You…you worked all this out while we were gone?” Nile asked hesitantly.

Quỳnh grinned at her. “There is a newfangled invention called ‘writing letters.’ Perhaps you have heard of it? We used it to plan what we would do if you and our brothers were successful, which we knew you would be.”

“We _hoped_ you would be,” Andy corrected. “And my God, did you fulfill every one of our hopes and more.”

“So…” Nile kicked the dirt awkwardly, feeling unsure about what to do with her hands. “What will you do after you’ve gotten the house in decent shape and passed it off to Celeste?”

The women looked at each other. “I think we’ll travel the world again,” said Quỳnh. “We’ve been in one place so long. I want to see how things have changed. Eat at new restaurants, and hear new music, and meet new people. Feel _alive_ again.”

Andy turned to look at Nile, her piercing gray gaze striking right at Nile’s heart as it had since the first time she’d met her. “We were hoping you would come with us.”

The words hung in the air there, as if Nile couldn’t quite let them in yet. “Pardon?”

Quỳnh stepped forward to take Nile’s hand between her own, placing a kiss on the palm and meeting her eyes with an open, affectionate smile. “Come with us,” she repeated. “I want so badly to see the world through your eyes. This is _your_ world, your age—you have so much to tell us! And we have so much to tell you!”

It had never occurred to Nile that getting what you desired most in life could hurt, but she realized it now as her eyes flooded with tears, blurring the vision of Andy and Quỳnh before her. “But—you two have been together _forever_ ,” she said. “How am I supposed to fit in with that?”

“Nile.” Andy stepped closer, the intensity of her eyes softening. “You fit in wherever you want. We love you.”

It was all too much for Nile to bear. She sprang forward to kiss Andy, and when she ran out of breath, she turned to kiss Quỳnh. The kisses probably weren’t very good—too fast, too eager, too wet. But Nile was too happy to care. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I’ll come with you. Yes, I’ll _be_ with you.”

Andy’s smile was blindingly happy. “Do you think you can stand to stay at this house with us long enough so that we can leave it to Celeste in halfway decent shape?”

Nile leaned back to look at Scythian Woods again, in all its mildewy glory. The place where she had found herself again, the place where she had found a whole new world of magic and friendship and love she could never have imagined. “I think I can manage,” she said. “I’m told I have a knack for fixing things.”

Quỳnh and Andy’s laughter rang out in the clear summer morning. A bird flew from one branch to another, annoyed by the noise; a bee ignored it in favor of the new flowers in front of the house. As the sun dried the dew from the grass, the moor came to life in the fresh new day.


End file.
